exhibited in the morals of those who live with us and present themselves
in abundance, as far as is possible. Wherefore we must keep them before
us." Yet how often we know merely the sight of those we call our friends,
or the sound of their voices, but nothing whatever of their mind or soul.

We must, moreover, be as careful to keep friends as to make them. If every
one knew what one said of the other, Pascal assures us that "there would
not be four friends in the world." This I hope and think is too strong,
but at any rate try to be one of the four. And when you have made a
friend, keep him. Hast thou a friend, says an Eastern proverb, "visit him
often, for thorns and brushwood obstruct the road which no one treads."
The affections should not be mere "tents of a night."

Still less does Friendship confer any privilege to make ourselves
disagreeable. Some people never seem to appreciate their friends till they
have lost them. Anaxagoras described the Mausoleum as the ghost of wealth
turned into stone.

"But he who has once stood beside the grave to look back on the
companionship which has been for ever closed, feeling how impotent _then_
are the wild love and the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to
the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit
for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt
to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust." [1]

Death, indeed, cannot sever friendship. "Friends," says Cicero, "though
absent, are still present; though in poverty they are rich; though weak,
yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to
assert, though dead they are alive." This seems a paradox, yet it there
not much truth in his explanation? "To me, indeed, Scipio still lives, and