UPTON,
March 5, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been thinking over your last letter: and
by the merest chance I stumbled yesterday on an old diary; it was
in 1890--a time, do you remember, when our paths had drifted
somewhat apart; you had just married, and I find a rather bitter
entry, which it amuses me to tell you of now, to the effect that
the marriage of a friend, which ought to give one a new friend,
often simply deprives one of an old one--"nec carus aeque nec
superstes integer," I add. Then I was, I suppose, hopelessly
absorbed in my profession; it was at the time when I had just taken
a boarding-house, and suffered much from the dejection which arises
from feeling unequal to the new claims.

It amuses me now to think that I could ever have thought of losing
your friendship; and it was only temporary; it was only that we
were fully occupied; you had to learn camaraderie with your wife,
for want of which one sees dryness creep into married lives, when
the first divine ardours of passion have died away, and when life
has to be lived in the common light of day. Well, all that soon
adjusted itself; and then I, too, found in your wife a true and
congenial friend, so that I can honestly say that your marriage has
been one of the most fortunate events of my life.

But that was not what I meant to write to you about; the point is