blood should be found on my skirts! but I believe I shall kill you, if
you do. The only reason why I have not laid violent hands on you
heretofore is that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to conduct my
electricity to the receptive and kindly earth; but if you intrude upon
my magnetisms without any such life-preserver, your future in this world
is not worth a crossed sixpence. Your silence would break the reed that
your talk but bruised. The only people with whom it is a joy to sit
silent are the people with whom it is a joy to talk. Clear out!

Friendship plays the mischief in the false ideas of constancy which are
generated and cherished in its name, if not by its agency. Your enemies
are intense, but temporary. Time wears off the edge of hostility. It is
the alembic in which offenses are dissolved into thin air, and a calm
indifference reigns in their stead. But your friends are expected to be
a permanent arrangement. They are not only a sore evil, but of long
continuance. Adhesiveness seems to be the head and front, the bones and
the blood, of their creed. It is not the direction of the quality, but
the quality itself, which they swear by. Only stick, it is no matter
what you stick to. Fall out with a man, and you can kiss and be friends
as soon as you like; the recording angel will set it down on the credit
side of his books. Fall in, and you are expected to stay in, _ad
infinitum, ad nauseam_. No matter what combination of laws got you
there, there you are, and there you must stay, for better, for worse,
till merciful death you do part,--or you are--"fickle." You find a man
entertaining for an hour, a week, a concert, a journey, and presto! you
are saddled with him forever. What preposterous absurdity! Do but look
at it calmly. You are thrown into contact with a person, and, as in duty
bound, you proceed to fathom him: for every man is a possible
revelation. In the deeps of his soul there may lie unknown worlds for
you. Consequently you proceed at once to experiment on him. It takes a