The smothered streams of love, which flow
More bright than Phlegethon, more low,
Island us ever, like the sea,
In an Atlantic mystery.
Our fabled shores none ever reach,
No mariner has found our beach,
Scarcely our mirage now is seen,
And neighboring waves with floating green,
Yet still the oldest charts contain
Some dotted outline of our main;
In ancient times midsummer days
Unto the western islands’ gaze,
To Teneriffe and the Azores,
Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores.
But sink not yet, ye desolate isles,
Anon your coast with commerce smiles,
And richer freights ye’ll furnish far
Than Africa or Malabar.
Be fair, be fertile evermore,
Ye rumored but untrodden shore,
Princes and monarchs will contend
Who first unto your land shall send,
And pawn the jewels of the crown
To call your distant soil their own.
Columbus has sailed westward of these isles by the mariner’s compass,
but neither he nor his successors have found them. We are no nearer
than Plato was. The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this New
World always haunts the outskirts of his time, and walks through the
densest crowd uninterrupted, and as it were in a straight line.
Sea and land are but his neighbors,
And companions in his labors,
Who on the ocean’s verge and firm land’s end
Doth long and truly seek his Friend.
Many men dwell far inland,
But he alone sits on the strand.
Whether he ponders men or books,
Always still he seaward looks,
Marine news he ever reads,
And the slightest glances heeds,
Feels the sea breeze on his cheek,
At each word the landsmen speak,
In every companion’s eye
A sailing vessel doth descry;
In the ocean’s sullen roar
From some distant port he hears,
Of wrecks upon a distant shore,
And the ventures of past years.
Who does not walk on the plain as amid the columns of Tadmore of the
desert? There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has
established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains
its maxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a
rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not
seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of
pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.
However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but
as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and
more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance,
and their actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to lay the chief
stress on likeness and not on difference, and in foreign bodies we
admit that there are many degrees of warmth below blood heat, but none
of cold above it.
Mencius says: “If one loses a fowl or a dog, he knows well how to seek
them again; if one loses the sentiments of his heart, he does not know
how to seek them again. . . . The duties of practical philosophy
consist only in seeking after those sentiments of the heart which we
have lost; that is all.”
One or two persons come to my house from time to time, there being
proposed to them the faint possibility of intercourse. They are as full
as they are silent, and wait for my plectrum to stir the strings of
their lyre. If they could ever come to the length of a sentence, or
hear one, on that ground they are dreaming of! They speak faintly, and
do not obtrude themselves. They have heard some news, which none, not
even they themselves, can impart. It is a wealth they can bear about
them which can be expended in various ways. What came they out to seek?
No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and indeed no
thought is more familiar to their aspirations. All men are dreaming of
it, and its drama, which is always a tragedy, is enacted daily. It is
the secret of the universe. You may thread the town, you may wander the
country, and none shall ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere
busy about it, and the idea of what is possible in this respect affects
our behavior toward all new men and women, and a great many old ones.
Nevertheless, I can remember only two or three essays on this subject
in all literature. No wonder that the Mythology, and Arabian Nights,
and Shakespeare, and Scott’s novels entertain us,—we are poets and
fablers and dramatists and novelists ourselves. We are continually
acting a part in a more interesting drama than any written. We are
dreaming that our Friends are our _Friends_, and that we are our
Friends’ _Friends_. Our actual Friends are but distant relations of
those to whom we are pledged. We never exchange more than three words
with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and
feelings almost habitually rise. One goes forth prepared to say, “Sweet
Friends!” and the salutation is, “Damn your eyes!” But never mind;
faint heart never won true Friend. O my Friend, may it come to pass
once, that when you are my Friend I may be yours.
Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if there are no hours
given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties
and relations? Friendship is first, Friendship last. But it is equally
impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal.
When they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them company. How
often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that
we may go and meet their ideal cousins. I would that I were worthy to
be any man’s Friend.
What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very
profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, _love_ their
Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to
the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not
often transfigured and translated by love in each other’s presence. I
do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a
man. If one abates a little the price of his wood, or gives a neighbor
his vote at town-meeting, or a barrel of apples, or lends him his wagon
frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance of Friendship. Nor do the
farmers’ wives lead lives consecrated to Friendship. I do not see the
pair of farmer Friends of either sex prepared to stand against the
world. There are only two or three couples in history. To say that a
man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not
your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and
trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in
time of need, by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel; but
he who foresees such advantages in this relation proves himself blind
to its real advantage, or indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation
itself. Such services are particular and menial, compared with the
perpetual and all-embracing service which it is. Even the utmost
good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for
Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but
in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our
bodies,—neighbors are kind enough for that,—but to do the like office
to our spirits. For this few are rich enough, however well disposed
they may be. For the most part we stupidly confound one man with
another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most
classes, but the wise man, individuals. To his Friend a man’s peculiar
character appears in every feature and in every action, and it is thus
drawn out and improved by him.
Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.
“He that hath love and judgment too,
Sees more than any other doe.”
It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a
saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the
magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man
with man.
And it is well said by another poet,
“Why love among the virtues is not known,
Is that love is them all contract in one.”
All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist,
the statesman, and the housekeeper are unconsciously amended in the
intercourse of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the
compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate
them in us. It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another
to hear. How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and stone? If we
dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how
to speak truth. Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth,
while traders prize a cheap honesty, and neighbors and acquaintance a
cheap civility. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties
are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to
expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only
copper. We ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly,
sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not even
hear this prayer. He says practically, I will be content if you treat
me as “no better than I should be,” as deceitful, mean, dishonest, and
selfish. For the most part, we are contented so to deal and to be dealt
with, and we do not think that for the mass of men there is any truer
and nobler relation possible. A man may have _good_ neighbors, so
called, and acquaintances, and even companions, wife, parents,
brothers, sisters, children, who meet himself and one another on this
ground only. The State does not demand justice of its members, but
thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly
more than rogues practise; and so do the neighborhood and the family.
What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor
among rogues.
But sometimes we are said to _love_ another, that is, to stand in a
true relation to him, so that we give the best to, and receive the best
from, him. Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and in
proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives
are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages
of affection in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such as no
prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our earthly life, and
anticipate Heaven for us. What is this Love that may come right into
the middle of a prosaic Goffstown day, equal to any of the gods? that
discovers a new world, fair and fresh and eternal, occupying the place
of the old one, when to the common eye a dust has settled on the
universe? which world cannot else be reached, and does not exist. What
other words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated
than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever
uttered. They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music,
they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other
words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should
not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear them
at all times.
The books for young people say a great deal about the _selection_ of
Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about _Friends_.
They mean associates and confidants merely. “Know that the contrariety
of foe and Friend proceeds from God.” Friendship takes place between
those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural
and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail. Even
speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do with it; but it follows
after silence, as the buds in the graft do not put forth into leaves
till long after the graft has taken. It is a drama in which the parties
have no part to act. We are all Mussulmen and fatalists in this
respect. Impatient and uncertain lovers think that they must say or do
something kind whenever they meet; they must never be cold. But they
who are Friends do not do what they _think_ they must, but what they
_must_. Even their Friendship is to some extent but a sublime
phenomenon to them.
The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such
terms as these.
“I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,—I have a right. I love
thee not as something private and personal, which is _your own_, but as
something universal and worthy of love, _which I have found_. O, how I
think of you! You are purely good, —you are infinitely good. I can
trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me
an opportunity to live.”
“You are the fact in a fiction,—you are the truth more strange and
admirable than fiction. Consent only to be what you are. I alone will
never stand in your way.”
“This is what I would like,—to be as intimate with you as our spirits
are intimate,—respecting you as I respect my ideal. Never to profane
one another by word or action, even by a thought. Between us, if
necessary, let there be no acquaintance.”
“I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from me?”
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept
and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each
other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.
Though the poet says, “’Tis the pre-eminence of Friendship to impute
excellence,” yet we can never praise our Friend, nor esteem him
praiseworthy, nor let him think that he can please us by any
_behavior_, or ever _treat_ us well enough. That kindness which has so
good a reputation elsewhere can least of all consist with this
relation, and no such affront can be offered to a Friend, as a
conscious good-will, a friendliness which is not a necessity of the
Friend’s nature.
The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to one another, by
constant constitutional differences, and are most commonly and surely
the complements of each other. How natural and easy it is for man to
secure the attention of woman to what interests himself. Men and women
of equal culture, thrown together, are sure to be of a certain value to
one another, more than men to men. There exists already a natural
disinterestedness and liberality in such society, and I think that any
man will more confidently carry his favorite books to read to some
circle of intelligent women, than to one of his own sex. The visit of
man to man is wont to be an interruption, but the sexes naturally
expect one another. Yet Friendship is no respecter of sex; and perhaps
it is more rare between the sexes than between two of the same sex.
Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect equality. It cannot
well spare any outward sign of equal obligation and advantage. The
nobleman can never have a Friend among his retainers, nor the king
among his subjects. Not that the parties to it are in all respects
equal, but they are equal in all that respects or affects their
Friendship. The one’s love is exactly balanced and represented by the
other’s. Persons are only the vessels which contain the nectar, and the
hydrostatic paradox is the symbol of love’s law. It finds its level and
rises to its fountain-head in all breasts, and its slenderest column
balances the ocean.
“And love as well the shepherd can
As can the mighty nobleman.”
The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than the other.
A hero’s love is as delicate as a maiden’s.
Confucius said, “Never contract Friendship with a man who is not better
than thyself.” It is the merit and preservation of Friendship, that it
takes place on a level higher than the actual characters of the parties
would seem to warrant. The rays of light come to us in such a curve
that every man whom we meet appears to be taller than he actually is.
Such foundation has civility. My Friend is that one whom I can
associate with my choicest thought. I always assign to him a nobler
employment in my absence than I ever find him engaged in; and I imagine
that the hours which he devotes to me were snatched from a higher
society. The sorest insult which I ever received from a Friend was,
when he behaved with the license which only long and cheap acquaintance
allows to one’s faults, in my presence, without shame, and still
addressed me in friendly accents. Beware, lest thy Friend learn at last
to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the
progress of thy love. There are times when we have had enough even of
our Friends, when we begin inevitably to profane one another, and must
withdraw religiously into solitude and silence, the better to prepare
ourselves for a loftier intimacy. Silence is the ambrosial night in the
intercourse of Friends, in which their sincerity is recruited and takes
deeper root.
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. Do you
demand that I be less your Friend that you may know it? Yet what right
have I to think that another cherishes so rare a sentiment for me? It
is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the
purest imagination and the rarest faith. It says by a silent but
eloquent behavior,—“I will be so related to thee as thou canst imagine;
even so thou mayest believe. I will spend truth,—all my wealth on
thee,”—and the Friend responds silently through his nature and life,
and treats his Friend with the same divine courtesy. He knows us
literally through thick and thin. He never asks for a sign of love, but
can distinguish it by the features which it naturally wears. We never
need to stand upon ceremony with him with regard to his visits. Wait
not till I invite thee, but observe that I am glad to see thee when
thou comest. It would be paying too dear for thy visit to ask for it.
Where my Friend lives there are all riches and every attraction, and no
slight obstacle can keep me from him. Let me never have to tell thee
what I have not to tell. Let our intercourse be wholly above ourselves,
and draw us up to it.
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an
intelligence above language. One imagines endless conversations with
his Friend, in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts be spoken
without hesitancy or end; but the experience is commonly far otherwise.
Acquaintances may come and go, and have a word ready for every
occasion; but what puny word shall he utter whose very breath is
thought and meaning? Suppose you go to bid farewell to your Friend who
is setting out on a journey; what other outward sign do you know than
to shake his hand? Have you any palaver ready for him then? any box of
salve to commit to his pocket? any particular message to send by him?
any statement which you had forgotten to make?—as if you could forget
anything.—No, it is much that you take his hand and say Farewell; that
you could easily omit; so far custom has prevailed. It is even painful,
if he is to go, that he should linger so long. If he must go, let him
go quickly. Have you any _last_ words? Alas, it is only the word of
words, which you have so long sought and found not; _you_ have not a
_first_ word yet. There are few even whom I should venture to call
earnestly by their most proper names. A name pronounced is the
recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce
my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.
Yet reserve is the freedom and abandonment of lovers. It is the reserve
of what is hostile or indifferent in their natures, to give place to
what is kindred and harmonious.
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it
is durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only
with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain
be. It is one proof of a man’s fitness for Friendship that he is able
to do without that which is cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is
as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the
guidance of their love, and know no other law nor kindness. It is not
extravagant and insane, but what it says is something established
henceforth, and will bear to be stereotyped. It is a truer truth, it is
better and fairer news, and no time will ever shame it, or prove it
false. This is a plant which thrives best in a temperate zone, where
summer and winter alternate with one another. The Friend is a
_necessarius_, and meets his Friend on homely ground; not on carpets
and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they will sit, obeying the
natural and primitive laws. They will meet without any outcry, and part
without loud sorrow. Their relation implies such qualities as the
warrior prizes; for it takes a valor to open the hearts of men as well
as the gates of castles. It is not an idle sympathy and mutual
consolation merely, but a heroic sympathy of aspiration and endeavor.
“When manhood shall be matched so
That fear can take no place,
Then weary _works_ make warriors
Each other to embrace.”
The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry the fur-trader, as
described in the latter’s “Adventures,” so almost bare and leafless,
yet not blossomless nor fruitless, is remembered with satisfaction and
security. The stern, imperturbable warrior, after fasting, solitude,
and mortification of body, comes to the white man’s lodge, and affirms
that he is the white brother whom he saw in his dream, and adopts him
henceforth. He buries the hatchet as it regards his friend, and they
hunt and feast and make maple-sugar together. “Metals unite from
fluxility; birds and beasts from motives of convenience; fools from
fear and stupidity; and just men at sight.” If Wawatam would taste the
“white man’s milk” with his tribe, or take his bowl of human broth made
of the trader’s fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place of safety for
his Friend, whom he has rescued from a similar fate. At length, after a
long winter of undisturbed and happy intercourse in the family of the
chieftain in the wilderness, hunting and fishing, they return in the
spring to Michilimackinac to dispose of their furs; and it becomes
necessary for Wawatam to take leave of his Friend at the Isle aux
Outardes, when the latter, to avoid his enemies, proceeded to the Sault
de Sainte Marie, supposing that they were to be separated for a short
time only. “We now exchanged farewells,” says Henry, “with an emotion
entirely reciprocal. I did not quit the lodge without the most grateful
sense of the many acts of goodness which I had experienced in it, nor
without the sincerest respect for the virtues which I had witnessed
among its members. All the family accompanied me to the beach; and the
canoe had no sooner put off than Wawatam commenced an address to the
Kichi Manito, beseeching him to take care of me, his brother, till we
should next meet. We had proceeded to too great a distance to allow of
our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had ceased to offer up his
prayers.” We never hear of him again.
Friendship is not so kind as is imagined; it has not much human blood
in it, but consists with a certain disregard for men and their
erections, the Christian duties and humanities, while it purifies the
air like electricity. There may be the sternest tragedy in the relation
of two more than usually innocent and true to their highest instincts.
We may call it an essentially heathenish intercourse, free and
irresponsible in its nature, and practising all the virtues
gratuitously. It is not the highest sympathy merely, but a pure and
lofty society, a fragmentary and godlike intercourse of ancient date,
still kept up at intervals, which, remembering itself, does not
hesitate to disregard the humbler rights and duties of humanity. It
requires immaculate and godlike qualities full-grown, and exists at all
only by condescension and anticipation of the remotest future. We love
nothing which is merely good and not fair, if such a thing is possible.
Nature puts some kind of blossom before every fruit, not simply a calyx
behind it. When the Friend comes out of his heathenism and
superstition, and breaks his idols, being converted by the precepts of
a newer testament; when he forgets his mythology, and treats his Friend
like a Christian, or as he can afford; then Friendship ceases to be
Friendship, and becomes charity; that principle which established the
almshouse is now beginning with its charity at home, and establishing
an almshouse and pauper relations there.
As for the number which this society admits, it is at any rate to be
begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we know, and whether the
world will ever carry it further, whether, as Chaucer affirms,
“There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair,”
remains to be proved;
“And certaine he is well begone
Among a thousand that findeth one.”
We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any while we are conscious
that another is more deserving of our love. Yet Friendship does not
stand for numbers; the Friend does not count his Friends on his
fingers; they are not numerable. The more there are included by this
bond, if they are indeed included, the rarer and diviner the quality of
the love that binds them. I am ready to believe that as private and
intimate a relation may exist by which three are embraced, as between
two. Indeed, we cannot have too many friends; the virtue which we
appreciate we to some extent appropriate, so that thus we are made at
last more fit for every relation of life. A base Friendship is of a
narrowing and exclusive tendency, but a noble one is not exclusive; its
very superfluity and dispersed love is the humanity which sweetens
society, and sympathizes with foreign nations; for though its
foundations are private, it is, in effect, a public affair and a public
advantage, and the Friend, more than the father of a family, deserves
well of the state.
The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a delicate
plant, though a native. The least unworthiness, even if it be unknown
to one’s self, vitiates it. Let the Friend know that those faults which
he observes in his Friend his own faults attract. There is no rule more
invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we
suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we say, I will have so much
and such of you, my Friend, no more. Perhaps there are none charitable,
none disinterested, none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true and
lasting Friendship.
I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do not appreciate
their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they
expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or
did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be that your
silence was the finest thing of the two. There are some things which a
man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the
highest communications we only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations
are not simply kept silent about, but buried under a positive depth of
silence never to be revealed. It may be that we are not even yet
acquainted. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is
misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. Then
there can never be an explanation. What avails it that another loves
you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse. What sort of
companions are they who are presuming always that their silence is more
expressive than yours? How foolish, and inconsiderate, and unjust, to
conduct as if you were the only party aggrieved! Has not your Friend
always equal ground of complaint? No doubt my Friends sometimes speak
to me in vain, but they do not know what things I hear which they are
not aware that they have spoken. I know that I have frequently
disappointed them by not giving them words when they expected them, or
such as they expected. Whenever I see my Friend I speak to him; but the
expecter, the man with the ears, is not he. They will complain too that
you are hard. O ye that would have the cocoa-nut wrong side outwards,
when next I weep I will let you know. They ask for words and deeds,
when a true relation is word and deed. If they know not of these
things, how can they be informed? We often forbear to confess our
feelings, not from pride, but for fear that we could not continue to
love the one who required us to give such proof of our affection.
I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelligent mind,
interested in her own culture, and earnest to enjoy the highest
possible advantages, and I meet her with pleasure as a natural person
who not a little provokes me, and I suppose is stimulated in turn by
myself. Yet our acquaintance plainly does not attain to that degree of
confidence and sentiment which women, which all, in fact, covet. I am
glad to help her, as I am helped by her; I like very well to know her
with a sort of stranger’s privilege, and hesitate to visit her often,
like her other Friends. My nature pauses here, I do not well know why.
Perhaps she does not make the highest demand on me, a religious demand.
Some, with whose prejudices or peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet
inspire me with confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as
a religious heathen at least,—a good Greek. I, too, have principles as
well founded as their own. If this person could conceive that, without
wilfulness, I associate with her as far as our destinies are
coincident, as far as our Good Geniuses permit, and still value such
intercourse, it would be a grateful assurance to me. I feel as if I
appeared careless, indifferent, and without principle to her, not
expecting more, and yet not content with less. If she could know that I
make an infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she would
see that this true though incomplete intercourse, is infinitely better
than a more unreserved but falsely grounded one, without the principle
of growth in it. For a companion, I require one who will make an equal
demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly
tolerant. It is suicide, and corrupts good manners to welcome any less
than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration
rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but
look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not
dispense with your company.
My love must be as free
As is the eagle’s wing,
Hovering o’er land and sea
And everything.
I must not dim my eye
In thy saloon,
I must not leave my sky
And nightly moon.
Be not the fowler’s net
Which stays my flight,
And craftily is set
T’allure the sight.
But be the favoring gale
That bears me on,
And still doth fill my sail
When thou art gone.
I cannot leave my sky
For thy caprice,
True love would soar as high
As heaven is.
The eagle would not brook
Her mate thus won,
Who trained his eye to look
Beneath the sun.
Few things are more difficult than to help a Friend in matters which do
not require the aid of Friendship, but only a cheap and trivial
service, if your Friendship wants the basis of a thorough practical
acquaintance. I stand in the friendliest relation, on social and
spiritual grounds, to one who does not perceive what practical skill I
have, but when he seeks my assistance in such matters, is wholly
ignorant of that one with whom he deals; does not use my skill, which
in such matters is much greater than his, but only my hands. I know
another, who, on the contrary, is remarkable for his discrimination in
this respect; who knows how to make use of the talents of others when
he does not possess the same; knows when not to look after or oversee,
and stops short at his man. It is a rare pleasure to serve him, which
all laborers know. I am not a little pained by the other kind of
treatment. It is as if, after the friendliest and most ennobling
intercourse, your Friend should use you as a hammer, and drive a nail
with your head, all in good faith; notwithstanding that you are a
tolerable carpenter, as well as his good Friend, and would use a hammer
cheerfully in his service. This want of perception is a defect which
all the virtues of the heart cannot supply:—
The Good how can we trust?
Only the Wise are just.
The Good we use,
The Wise we cannot choose.
These there are none above;
The Good they know and love,
But are not known again
By those of lesser ken.
They do not charm us with their eyes,
But they transfix with their advice;
No partial sympathy they feel,
With private woe or private weal,
But with the universe joy and sigh,
Whose knowledge is their sympathy.
Confucius said: “To contract ties of Friendship with any one, is to
contract Friendship with his virtue. There ought not to be any other
motive in Friendship.” But men wish us to contract Friendship with
their vice also. I have a Friend who wishes me to see that to be right
which I know to be wrong. But if Friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if
it is to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be expansive
and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True Friendship can
afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. A
want of discernment cannot be an ingredient in it. If I can see my
Friend’s virtues more distinctly than another’s, his faults too are
made more conspicuous by contrast. We have not so good a right to hate
any as our Friend. Faults are not the less faults because they are
invariably balanced by corresponding virtues, and for a fault there is
no excuse, though it may appear greater than it is in many ways. I have
never known one who could bear criticism, who could not be flattered,
who would not bribe his judge, or was content that the truth should be
loved always better than himself.
If two travellers would go their way harmoniously together, the one
must take as true and just a view of things as the other, else their
path will not be strewn with roses. Yet you can travel profitably and
pleasantly even with a blind man, if he practises common courtesy, and
when you converse about the scenery will remember that he is blind but
that you can see; and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is
probably quickened by his want of sight. Otherwise you will not long
keep company. A blind man, and a man in whose eyes there was no defect,
were walking together, when they came to the edge of a precipice. “Take
care! my friend,” said the latter, “here is a steep precipice; go no
farther this way.”—“I know better,” said the other, and stepped off.
It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend.
We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint
is too well grounded to be uttered. There is not so good an
understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious
fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its
heinousness. The constitutional differences which always exist, and are
obstacles to a perfect Friendship, are forever a forbidden theme to the
lips of Friends. They advise by their whole behavior. Nothing can
reconcile them but love. They are fatally late when they undertake to
explain and treat with one another like foes. Who will take an apology
for a Friend? They must apologize like dew and frost, which are off
again with the sun, and which all men know in their hearts to be
beneficent. The necessity itself for explanation,—what explanation will
atone for that?
True love does not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mutual
acquaintances can explain away, but, alas, however slight the apparent
cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, which can
never be set aside. Its quarrel, if there is any, is ever recurring,
notwithstanding the beams of affection which invariably come to gild
its tears; as the rainbow, however beautiful and unerring a sign, does
not promise fair weather forever, but only for a season. I have known
two or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never known advice to
be of use but in trivial and transient matters. One may know what
another does not, but the utmost kindness cannot impart what is
requisite to make the advice useful. We must accept or refuse one
another as we are. I could tame a hyena more easily than my Friend. He
is a material which no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell
an oak with a firebrand, and wear a hatchet out of a rock by friction,
but I cannot hew the smallest chip out of the character of my Friend,
either to beautify or deform it.
The lover learns at last that there is no person quite transparent and
trustworthy, but every one has a devil in him that is capable of any
crime in the long run. Yet, as an Oriental philosopher has said,
“Although Friendship between good men is interrupted, their principles
remain unaltered. The stalk of the lotus may be broken, and the fibres
remain connected.”
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill
without. There may be courtesy, there may be even temper, and wit, and
talent, and sparkling conversation, there may be good-will even,—and
yet the humanest and divinest faculties pine for exercise. Our life
without love is like coke and ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and
Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, and yet
if there is no milk mingled with the wine at their entertainments,
better is the hospitality of Goths and Vandals.
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but flesh of my
flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. I see his nature groping
yonder so like mine. We do not live far apart. Have not the fates
associated us in many ways? It says, in the Vishnu Purana: “Seven paces
together is sufficient for the friendship of the virtuous, but thou and
I have dwelt together.” Is it of no significance that we have so long
partaken of the same loaf, drank at the same fountain, breathed the
same air summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; that the same
fruits have been pleased to refresh us both, and we have never had a
thought of different fibre the one from the other!
Nature doth have her dawn each day,
But mine are far between;
Content, I cry, for sooth to say,
Mine brightest are I ween.
For when my sun doth deign to rise,
Though it be her noontide,
Her fairest field in shadow lies,
Nor can my light abide.
Sometimes I bask me in her day,
Conversing with my mate,
But if we interchange one ray,
Forthwith her heats abate.
Through his discourse I climb and see,
As from some eastern hill,
A brighter morrow rise to me
Than lieth in her skill.
As ’t were two summer days in one,
Two Sundays come together,
Our rays united make one sun,
With fairest summer weather.
As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall translate me to the
ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth; as surely
as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying ear shall make
age to be forgotten, or, in short, the manifold influences of nature
survive during the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall
forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall
foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less than the ruins
of temples. As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming
stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and
winter, I love thee, my Friend.
But all that can be said of Friendship, is like botany to flowers. How
can the understanding take account of its friendliness?
Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They
will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to
defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be
incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of
other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the
graveyard.
This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends.
Also this other word of entreaty and advice to the large and
respectable nation of Acquaintances, beyond the mountains;—Greeting.
My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let us see that we have the
whole advantage of each other; we will be useful, at least, if not
admirable, to one another. I know that the mountains which separate us
are high, and covered with perpetual snow, but despair not. Improve the
serene winter weather to scale them. If need be, soften the rocks with
vinegar. For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready to receive you.
Nor shall I be slow on my side to penetrate to your Provence. Strike
then boldly at head or heart or any vital part. Depend upon it, the
timber is well seasoned and tough, and will bear rough usage; and if it
should crack, there is plenty more where it came from. I am no piece of
crockery that cannot be jostled against my neighbor without danger of
being broken by the collision, and must needs ring false and jarringly
to the end of my days, when once I am cracked; but rather one of the
old-fashioned wooden trenchers, which one while stands at the head of
the table, and at another is a milking-stool, and at another a seat for
children, and finally goes down to its grave not unadorned with
honorable scars, and does not die till it is worn out. Nothing can
shock a brave man but dulness. Think how many rebuffs every man has
experienced in his day; perhaps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten
fresh-water clams, or worn one shirt for a week without washing.
Indeed, you cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity
for that which shocks you. Use me, then, for I am useful in my way, and
stand as one of many petitioners, from toadstool and henbane up to
dahlia and violet, supplicating to be put to my use, if by any means ye
may find me serviceable; whether for a medicated drink or bath, as balm
and lavender; or for fragrance, as verbena and geranium; or for sight,
as cactus; or for thoughts, as pansy. These humbler, at least, if not
those higher uses.
Ah, my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would not forget you. I can well
afford to welcome you. Let me subscribe myself Yours ever and
truly,—your much obliged servant. We have nothing to fear from our
foes; God keeps a standing army for that service; but we have no ally
against our Friends, those ruthless Vandals.
Once more to one and all,
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers.”
Let such pure hate still underprop
Our love, that we may be
Each other’s conscience.
And have our sympathy
Mainly from thence.
We’ll one another treat like gods,
And all the faith we have
In virtue and in truth, bestow
On either, and suspicion leave
To gods below.
Two solitary stars,—
Unmeasured systems far
Between us roll,
But by our conscious light we are
Determined to one pole.
What need confound the sphere,—
Love can afford to wait,
For it no hour’s too late
That witnesseth one duty’s end,
Or to another doth beginning lend.
It will subserve no use,
More than the tints of flowers,
Only the independent guest
Frequents its bowers,
Inherits its bequest.
No speech though kind has it,
But kinder silence doles
Unto its mates,
By night consoles,
By day congratulates.
What saith the tongue to tongue?
What heareth ear of ear?
By the decrees of fate
From year to year,
Does it communicate.
Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns,—
No trivial bridge of words,
Or arch of boldest span,
Can leap the moat that girds
The sincere man.
No show of bolts and bars
Can keep the foeman out,
Or ’scape his secret mine
Who entered with the doubt
That drew the line.
No warder at the gate
Can let the friendly in,
But, like the sun, o’er all
He will the castle win,
And shine along the wall.
There’s nothing in the world I know
That can escape from love,
For every depth it goes below,
And every height above.
It waits as waits the sky,
Until the clouds go by,
Yet shines serenely on
With an eternal day,
Alike when they are gone,
And when they stay.
Implacable is Love,—
Foes may be bought or teased
From their hostile intent,
But he goes unappeased
Who is on kindness bent.
Having rowed five or six miles above Amoskeag before sunset, and
reached a pleasant part of the river, one of us landed to look for a
farm-house, where we might replenish our stores, while the other
remained cruising about the stream, and exploring the opposite shores
to find a suitable harbor for the night. In the mean while the
canal-boats began to come round a point in our rear, poling their way
along close to the shore, the breeze having quite died away. This time
there was no offer of assistance, but one of the boatmen only called
out to say, as the truest revenge for having been the losers in the
race, that he had seen a wood-duck, which we had scared up, sitting on
a tall white-pine, half a mile down stream; and he repeated the
assertion several times, and seemed really chagrined at the apparent
suspicion with which this information was received. But there sat the
summer duck still, undisturbed by us.
By and by the other voyageur returned from his inland expedition,
bringing one of the natives with him, a little flaxen-headed boy, with
some tradition, or small edition, of Robinson Crusoe in his head, who
had been charmed by the account of our adventures, and asked his
father’s leave to join us. He examined, at first from the top of the
bank, our boat and furniture, with sparkling eyes, and wished himself
already his own man. He was a lively and interesting boy, and we should
have been glad to ship him; but Nathan was still his father’s boy, and
had not come to years of discretion.
We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and water melons for
dessert. For this farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, cultivated a
large patch of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. He
hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and
kiln and melon-patch, warning us to step over the tight rope which
surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a
little bower at one corner, where it connected with the lock of a gun
ranging with the line, and where, as he informed us, he sometimes sat
in pleasant nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped
high over the line, and sympathized with our host’s on the whole quite
human, if not humane, interest in the success of his experiment. That
night especially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the
atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who
had his dwelling between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there
belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement of distant
political organizations, and by his own tenacity, held a property in
his melons, and continued to plant. We suggested melon-seeds of new
varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had
come away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable
beneficence of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as well in one
man’s garden as another’s, and the sun lodges as kindly under his
hillside,—when we had imagined that she inclined rather to some few
earnest and faithful souls whom we know.
We found a convenient harbor for our boat on the opposite or east
shore, still in Hooksett, at the mouth of a small brook which emptied
into the Merrimack, where it would be out of the way of any passing
boat in the night,—for they commonly hug the shore if bound up stream,
either to avoid the current, or touch the bottom with their poles,—and
where it would be accessible without stepping on the clayey shore. We
set one of our largest melons to cool in the still water among the
alders at the mouth of this creek, but when our tent was pitched and
ready, and we went to get it, it had floated out into the stream, and
was nowhere to be seen. So taking the boat in the twilight, we went in
pursuit of this property, and at length, after long straining of the
eyes, its green disk was discovered far down the river, gently floating
seaward with many twigs and leaves from the mountains that evening, and
so perfectly balanced that it had not keeled at all, and no water had
run in at the tap which had been taken out to hasten its cooling.
As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the clear light of the western
sky fell on the eastern trees, and was reflected in the water, and we
enjoyed so serene an evening as left nothing to describe. For the most
part we think that there are few degrees of sublimity, and that the
highest is but little higher than that which we now behold; but we are
always deceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale and fade
away. We are grateful when we are reminded by interior evidence of the
permanence of universal laws; for our faith is but faintly remembered,
indeed, is not a remembered assurance, but a use and enjoyment of
knowledge. It is when we do not have to believe, but come into actual
contact with Truth, and are related to her in the most direct and
intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time,
like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. In some
happier moment, when more sap flows in the withered stalk of our life,
Syria and India stretch away from our present as they do in history.
All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows
of our private experiences. Suddenly and silently the eras which we
call history awake and glimmer in us, and _there_ is room for Alexander
and Hannibal to march and conquer. In short, the history which we read
is only a fainter memory of events which have happened in our own
experience. Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.
This world is but canvas to our imaginations. I see men with infinite
pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, what I, with at least
equal pains, would realize to my imagination,—its capacities; for
certainly there is a life of the mind above the wants of the body, and
independent of it. Often the body is warmed, but the imagination is
torpid; the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and shrunk. But
what avails all other wealth if this is wanting? “Imagination is the
air of mind,” in which it lives and breathes. All things are as I am.
Where is the House of Change? The past is only so heroic as we see it.
It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in
one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field. Our circumstances
answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures. I have
noticed that if a man thinks that he needs a thousand dollars, and
cannot be convinced that he does not, he will commonly be found to have
them; if he lives and thinks a thousand dollars will be forthcoming,
though it be to buy shoe-strings with. A thousand mills will be just as
slow to come to one who finds it equally hard to convince himself that
he needs _them_.
Men are by birth equal in this, that given
Themselves and their condition, they are even.
I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives.
The miracle is, that what is _is_, when it is so difficult, if not
impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular
paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must
walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do
anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength
are gone, and yet this suffices. The bird now sits just out of gunshot.
I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor. If debts are
incurred, why, debts are in the course of events cancelled, as it were
by the same law by which they were incurred. I heard that an engagement
was entered into between a certain youth and a maiden, and then I heard
that it was broken off, but I did not know the reason in either case.
We are hedged about, we think, by accident and circumstance, now we
creep as in a dream, and now again we run, as if there were a fate in
it, and all things thwarted or assisted. I cannot change my clothes but
when I do, and yet I do change them, and soil the new ones. It is
wonderful that this gets done, when some admirable deeds which I could
mention do not get done. Our particular lives seem of such fortune and
confident strength and durability as piers of solid rock thrown forward
into the tide of circumstance. When every other path would fail, with
singular and unerring confidence we advance on our particular course.
What risks we run! famine and fire and pestilence, and the thousand
forms of a cruel fate,—and yet every man lives till he—dies. How did he
manage that? Is there no immediate danger? We wonder superfluously when
we hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely,—we have walked a
plank all our lives up to this particular string-piece where we are. My
life will wait for nobody, but is being matured still without delay,
while I go about the streets, and chaffer with this man and that to
secure it a living. It is as indifferent and easy meanwhile as a poor
man’s dog, and making acquaintance with its kind. It will cut its own
channel like a mountain stream, and by the longest ridge is not kept
from the sea at last. I have found all things thus far, persons and
inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my
resources. No matter what imprudent haste in my career; I am permitted
to be rash. Gulfs are bridged in a twinkling, as if some unseen
baggage-train carried pontoons for my convenience, and while from the
heights I scan the tempting but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity,
the ship is being carried over the mountains piecemeal on the backs of
mules and lamas, whose keel shall plough its waves, and bear me to the
Indies. Day would not dawn if it were not for