with the profane, the Sabbath-breaking, the drunken, and the licentious;
for he lowers himself, without elevating them. The sweep is not made the
less black by rubbing against the well-dressed and the clean, while they
are inevitably defiled. Keep company with persons rather above than
below yourself; for gold in the same pocket with silver loseth both of
its weight and color. Nothing elevates us so much as the presence of a
spirit similar, yet superior, to our own. What is companionship where
nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the
larger heart contracts itself to the mold and dimensions of the smaller?
In all society it is advisable to associate, if possible, with the
highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if
disgusted there, you can at any time descend; but if we begin at the
lowest, to ascend is impossible. It should be the aim of the young man
to seek the society of the wise, the intelligent, and the good. It is
always safe to be found in the society of those who, with a good heart,
combine intelligence and an ability to impart information. If you wish
to be respected, if you desire happiness and not misery, associate only
with the intelligent and good. Once habituate yourself to a virtuous
course, once secure a love of good society, and no punishment would be
greater than, by accident, to be obliged to associate, even for a short
time, with the low and vulgar.
He that sinks into familiarity with persons much below his own level
will be constantly weighed down by his base connections, and, though he
may easily sink lower, he will find it hard to rise again. Better be
alone than in bad company. "Evil communications corrupt good manners."
Ill qualities are catching as well as diseases, and the mind is at least
as much, if not a great deal more, liable to infections than the body.
Go with mean people and you think life is mean. Society is the
atmosphere of souls, and we necessarily imbibe something which is either
infectious or salubrious. The society of virtuous persons is enjoyed
beyond their company, and vice carries a sting even into solitude. The
society you keep is both the indicator and former of your character. In
company, when the pores of the mind are all opened, there requires more
guard than usual, because the mind is then passive. In vicious company
you will feel your reverence for the dictates of conscience wear off.
The name at which angels bow and devils tremble you will hear contemned
and abused. The Bible will supply materials for unmeaning jests or
impious buffoonery. The consequences will be a practical deviation into
vice—the principle will become sapped and the fences of conscience
broken down.
It is not alone the low and dissipated, the vulgar and profane, from
whose example and society you are in danger. These persons of reputation
will despise and shun. But there are persons of apparently decent
morals, of polished manners and interesting talents, but who, at the
same time, are unprincipled and wicked, who make light of sacred things,
scoff at religion, and deride the suggestions and scruples of a tender
conscience as superstition,—these are the persons whose society and
influence are most to be feared. Their breath is pollution; their
embrace, death. Unhappily there are many of this description. They mark
out their unwary victims: they gradually draw them into their toils;
they strike the deadly fang, infuse the poison, and exult to see
youthful virtue and parental hope wither and expire under their ruffian
example. Many a young man has thus been led on by his elders in iniquity
till he has been initiated into all the mysteries of debauchery and
crime, and ended his days a poor, outcast wretch.
Live with the culpable and you will be apt to die with the criminal. Bad
company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or
second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty, but, being driven
in to the head, it can only be withdrawn by the destruction of the wood.
Be you ever so pure-minded yourself you can not associate with bad
companions without falling into bad odor. Evil company is like tobacco
smoke—you can not be long in its presence without carrying away a taint
of it. "Let no man deceive himself," says Petrarch, "by thinking that
the contagions of the soul are less than those of the body. They are yet
greater; they sink deeper and come on more unsuspectedly." From impure
air we take diseases; from bad company, vice and imperfections. Avoid,
as far as you can, the company of all vicious persons whatsoever, for no
vice is alone, and all are infectious.
Good company not only improves our manners, but also our minds, and
intelligent associates will become a source of enjoyment as well as of
edification. Good company is that which is composed of intelligent and
well-bred persons, whose language is chaste and good, whose sentiments
are pure and edifying, whose deportment is such as pure and
well-regulated education and correct morals dictate, and whose conduct
is directed and restrained by the pure precepts of religion. When we
have the advantages of such company it should then be the object of our
zeal to imitate their real excellencies, copy their politeness, their
carriage, their address, and the easy, well-bred turn of their
conversation; but we should remember that, let them shine ever so
bright, their vices are so many blemishes upon their character which we
should no more think of endeavoring to imitate than we should to make
artificial warts upon our faces because some distinguished person
happened to have one there by nature.
Water will seek its level. So do the various elements of society. Tell
us whom you prefer as companions and we can tell who you are like. Do
you love the society of the vulgar? Then you are already debased in your
sentiments. Do you seek to be with the profane? In your heart you are
like them. Are jesters and buffoons your choice companions? He who loves
to laugh at folly is himself a fool. Do you love and seek the society of
the wise and good? Is this your habit? Had you rather take the lowest
seat among these than the highest seat with others? Then you have
already learned to be good. You may not make very rapid progress, but
even a good beginning is not to be despised. Hold on your way, and seek
to be the companion of those that fear God. So shall you be wise for
yourself and wise for eternity.
[Illustration: Engraved & Printed by Illman Brothers.
FRIENDSHIP.]
[Illustration: FRIENDS.]
"There are a thousand nameless ties,
Which only such as feel them know,
Of kindred thoughts, deep sympathies,
And untold fancy spells, which throw
O'er ardent minds and faithful hearts
A chain whose charmed links so blend
That the bright circlet but imparts
Its force in these fond words—'_My Friend!_'"
[Illustration]
Friendship is the sweetest and most satisfactory connection in life. It
has notable effect upon all states and conditions. It relieves our
cares, raises our hopes, and abates our fears. A friend who relates his
successes talks himself into a new pleasure, and by opening his
misfortunes leaves a part of them behind him. Friendship improves
happiness and abates misery, by doubling our joys and dividing our
griefs. Charity is friendship in common, and friendship is charity
inclosed. It is a sweet attraction of the heart towards the merit we
esteem or the perfection we admire, and produces a mutual inclination
between two or more persons to promote each others' interests,
knowledge, virtue, and happiness.
The language of friendship is as varied as the wants and weaknesses of
humanity. To the timid and cautious it speaks words of encouragement. To
the weak it is ready to extend a helping hand. To the bold and
venturesome it whispers words of caution. It is ready to sympathize with
the sorrowing one, and to rejoice with those of good cheer. Friendship
is not confined to any particular class of society or any particular
geographical locality. No surveyed chart, no natural boundary line, no
rugged mountain or steep declining vale puts a limit to its growth.
Wherever it is watered with the dews of kindness and affection, there
you may be sure to find it. Allied in closest companionship with its
twin sister, Charity, it enters the abode of sorrow and wretchedness,
and causes happiness and peace. Its influence dispels every poisoned
thought of envy, and spreads abroad in the mind a contentment which all
the powers of the mind could not otherwise bestow. True friendship will
bloom only in the soil of a noble and self-sacrificing heart. There it
enjoys perpetual Summer, diffusing a sweet atmosphere of love, peace,
and joy to all around.
No man can go very far with strength and courage, if he goes alone
through the weary struggles of life. We are made to be happier and
better by each other's notice and appreciation, and the hearts that are
debarred from those influences invariably contract and harden. Here and
there we find persons who, from pride or singularity of disposition,
affect to be altogether independent of the notice or regard of their
fellow-beings; but never yet was there constituted a human heart that
did not at some time, in some tender and yearning hour, long for the
sympathy of other hearts. Instead of striving to conceal this feeling,
it should be regarded as one possessing true nobility. True friendship
can only be molded by the experience of time. The attractive face, the
winning tongue, or the strong need of some passer-by, is not the
permanent test of the union of hearts. We want a more substantial proof
than any of these. A thousand transitory friends meet us along the
crowded thoroughfares of life; but when we come to try their durability
in the sieve of experience, alas, how many fall through! There have been
times in the life of every man when he has been willing to stake
reputation, credit, _all_, on the true friendship of some companion; but
he turns to find his idol clay, the gold but dross. Few persons are so
fortunate as to secure in the course of life the happiness and
advantages of one efficient and devoted friend. It is all that many aim
at, seek, and ask to have, and is worth a whole caravan of those
lukewarm and treacherous souls who, indeed, profess to be attached to
us, but whose affection is so uncertain and unstable that we fear to put
it to the test of trial lest we lose it forever.
Concerning the one you call your friend, tell us, will he weep with you
in your hours of distress? Will he faithfully reprove you to your face
for actions for which others are ridiculing and censuring you behind
your back? Will he dare to stand forth in your defense when detraction
is secretly aiming its weapon at your reputation? Will he acknowledge
you with the same cordiality and behave to you with the same friendly
attention in the company of your superiors in rank and fortune as when
the claims of pride do not interfere with those of friendship? If
misfortune and loss should oblige you to retire into a walk of life in
which you can not appear with the same liberality as formerly, will he
still think himself happy in your society, and instead of withdrawing
himself from an unprofitable connection, take pleasure in professing
himself your friend, and cheerfully assist you to support the burden of
your afflictions? When sickness shall call you to retire from the busy
world, will he follow you to your gloomy retreat, listen with attention
to your tale of suffering, and administer the balm of consolation to
your fainting spirit? And, lastly, when death shall burst asunder every
earthly tie, will he shed a tear upon your grave, and lodge the dear
remembrance of your mutual friendship in his heart? If so, then grapple
him to your heart with hooks of steel; and you shall know the privilege
of having one true friend.
Friendship is a vase which, when it is flawed by violence or accident,
may as well be broken at once; it never can be trusted after. The more
graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the
hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they
are fractured, may be cemented again; precious ones never. It is a great
thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the faults of a friend; to
draw a curtain before his stains; to bury his weakness in silence, but
to proclaim his virtues upon the housetop. Prosperity is no just scale;
adversity is the only true balance to weigh friends in. True friendship
must withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the
name, since friendships which are born in adversity are more firm and
lasting than those formed in happiness, as iron is more strongly united
the fiercer the flames. One has never the least difficulty in finding a
devoted friend except when he needs one. Real friends are wont to visit
us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come of their
own accord. A friend is not known in prosperity, but can not be hidden
in adversity. If we lack the sagacity to discriminate wisely between our
acquaintances and our friends, misfortune will readily do it for us.
Prosperity gains friends, and adversity tries them. False friends are
like our shadows—keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but
leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. False friendship, like
the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship
gives new life and animation to the object it supports.
The hardest trials of those who fall from affluence to poverty and
obscurity is the discovery that the attachment of so many in whom they
confided was a pretense, a mask to gain their own ends, or was a
miserable shallowness. Sometimes, doubtless, it is with regret that
these frivolous followers of the world desert those upon whom they have
fawned; but they soon forget them. Flies leave the kitchen when the
dishes are empty. The parasites that cluster about the favorites of
fortune to gather his gifts and climb by his aid, linger with the
sunshine, but scatter at the approach of a storm, as the leaves cling to
a tree in Summer weather, but drop off at the breath of Winter. Like
ravens settled down for a banquet and suddenly scared away by a noise,
how quickly at the first sound of calamity the superficial friends are
up and away. Cling to your friends after having chosen them with proper
caution. If they reprove you, thank them; if they grieve you, forgive
them; if circumstances have torn them from you, circumstances may change
and make them yours again. Be very slow to give up an old and tried
friend. A true friend is such a rare thing to have that you are blessed
beyond the majority of men if you possess but one such. The first law of
friendship is sincerity, and he who violates this law will soon find
himself destitute of that which he sought.
The death of a friendship is always a tragical affair. Sometimes it
cools from day to day, warm confidence gradually giving place to cold
civility, and these in turn swiftly becoming icy husks of neglect and
repugnance. Sometimes its remembrances touch us with a pang, or we stand
at its grave sobbing, wounded with a grief whose balsam never grew. The
hardest draught in the cup of life is wrung from betrayed affection,
when the guiding light of friendship is quenched in deception, and the
gloom that surrounds our path grows palpable. Let one find cold repulse
or mocking treachery where he expected the greeting of friendship, and
it is not strange that he feels crushed with the discovery.
Old friends! What a multitude of deep and varied emotions are called up
from the soul by the utterance of these two words! What thronging
memories of other days crowd the brain when they are spoken! Oh, there
is magic in their sound, and the spell it evokes is both sad and
pleasing. When reverie brings before us in quick succession the scenes
of by-gone years, how do the features of olden friends, dim and shadowy
as the grave in which many of them are laid, flit before us! How they
carry us to other scenes and other places! The thoughts which fill the
mind when thus musing on the past are always of a chastened kind. In the
scenes of the past we behold a type of the future. The fate of our
friends shadows forth our own, and we are indeed dull if we fail to
arise from fancied communication with old friends wiser and better men
and women.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: POWER OF CUSTOM.]
[Illustration]
There are many who find themselves in the toils of an evil custom who
would most willingly give money and time to be free from its control.
Montaigne says, "Custom is a violent and treacherous school-mistress.
She, by little and little, slyly and unperceivedly slips in the foot of
her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the
benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious
and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or
the power to lift up our eyes." Custom is the law of one class of people
and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash, for precedence
is the legislator of the first and novelty of the second. Custom,
therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are
present; but both are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.
Of the two, fashion imposes the heaviest burdens, for she cheats her
votaries of their time, their fortune, and their comforts, and she
repays them only with the celebrity of being ridiculed and despised—a
very paradoxical mode of payment, yet always most thankfully received.
It is surprising to what an extent our likes and dislikes are creatures
of custom. Our modes of belief, thoughts, and opinions are molded and
shaped by what has been the prevailing mode of thinking heretofore.
Though we are, indeed, not so given to the worship of past institutions
as some people, yet we all acknowledge the prevailing power of custom,
of personal habits, and of fashions. We dare not stand alone in any
matter of concern, but wish to be in company of those similarly minded.
The law of opinion goes forth. We do not ask who promulgates it, but
fall into the ranks of its followers and worshipers. We are whirled in
the giddy ranks and blinded by the dazzling lights. Novelty is the show,
conformity is the law—and life a trance, until at last we awake from it
to find that we have been the victims of a fatal folly and a bewildering
dream.
Habit is man's best friend or worst enemy. It can exalt him to the
highest pinnacle of virtue, honor, or happiness, or sink him to the
lowest depths of vice, shame, and misery. If we look back upon the usual
course of our feelings we shall find that we are more influenced by the
frequent recurrence of objects than by their weight and importance, and
that habit has more force in forming our character than our opinions.
The mind naturally takes its tone and complexion from what it habitually
contemplates. "Whatever may be the cause," says Lord Kames, "it is an
established fact that we are much influenced by custom. It hath an
effect upon our pleasures, upon our actions, and even upon our thoughts
and sentiments." Habit makes no figure during the vivacity of youth, in
middle age it gains ground, and in old age governs without control. In
that period of life, generally speaking, we eat at a certain hour, take
exercise at a certain time, all by the direction of habit; nay, a
particular seat, table, and bed comes to be essential, and a habit in
any of these can not be contradicted without uneasiness. Man, it has
been said, is a bundle of habits, and habit is a second nature.
Metastasio entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of
repetition in act and thought that he said, "All is habit in mankind,
even virtue itself."
Beginning with single acts habit is formed slowly at first, and it is
not till its spider's thread is woven in a thick cable that its
existence is suspected. Then it is found that beginning in cobwebs it
ends in chains. Gulliver was bound as fast by the Lilliputians with
multiplied threads as if they had used ropes. "Like flakes of snow that
fall unperceivedly upon the earth," says Jeremy Bentham, "the seemingly
unimportant events of life succeed one another." As the snow gathers so
are our habits formed; no single flake that is added to the pile
produces a sensible change; no single action creates, however it may
exhibit, a man's character. But as the tempest hurls the avalanche down
the mountain and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so
passion, acting upon the elements of mischief which pernicious habits
have brought together by imperceptible accumulation, may overthrow the
edifice of truth and virtue.
The force of habit renders pleasant many things which at first were
intensely disagreeable or even painful. Walking upon the quarter-deck of
a vessel, though felt at first to be intolerably confined, becomes, by
repetition, so agreeable to the sailor that, in his walks on shore, he
often hems himself within the same bounds. Arctic explorers become so
accustomed to the hardships incident to such a life that they do not
enjoy the comforts of home when they return. So powerful is the effect
of constant repetition of action that men whose habits are fixed may
almost be said to have lost their free agency. Their actions become of
the nature of fate, and they are so bound by the chains which they have
woven for themselves that they do that which they have been accustomed
to do even when they know it can yield neither pleasure nor profit.
Those who are in the power of an evil habit must conquer it as they can,
and conquered it must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be
obtained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by
timely caution, preserve their freedom. They may effectually resolve to
escape the tyrant whom they will vainly resolve to conquer. Be not slow
in the breaking of a sinful custom; a quick, courageous resolution is
better than a gradual deliberation; in such a combat he is the bravest
soldier who lays about him without fear or wit. Wit pleads; fear
disheartens. He who would kill hydra had better strike off one neck than
five heads,—fell the tree and the branches are soon cut off. Vicious
habits are so great a strain on human nature, said Cicero, and so odious
in themselves that every person actuated by right reason would avoid
them, though he were sure they would always be concealed both from God
and man and had no future punishment entailed on them. Vicious habits,
when opposed, offer the most vigorous resistance on the first attack; at
each successive encounter this resistance grows weaker, until, finally,
it ceases altogether, and the victory is achieved.
Such being the power of habit all can plainly see the importance of
forming habits of such a nature that they shall constantly tend to
increase our happiness, and to render more sure and certain that success
the attaining of which is the object of all our endeavors. We may form
habits of honesty or knavery, frugality or extravagance, of patience or
impatience, self-denial or self-indulgence. In short, there is not a
virtue nor a vice, not an act of body nor of mind, to which we may not
be chained by this despotic power. It has been truly said that even
happiness may become habitual. One may acquire the habit of looking upon
the sunny side of things, or of looking upon the gloomy side. He may
accustom himself, by a happy alchemy, to transmute the darkest events
into materials for hopes. Hume, the historian, said that the habit of
looking at the bright side of things was better than an income of a
thousand pounds a year.
Habits which are to be commended are not to be formed in a day, nor by a
few faint resolutions, not by accident, not by fits and starts—being
one moment in a paroxysm of attention and the next falling into the
sleep of indifference—are they to be obtained, but by steady,
persistent efforts. Above all, it is necessary that they should be
acquired in youth, for then do they cost the least effort. Like letters
cut in the bark of a tree, they grow and widen with age. Once obtained
they are a fortune of themselves, for their possessor has disposed
thereby of the heavier end of the load of life; all the remaining he can
carry easily and pleasantly. On the other hand, bad habits, once formed,
will hang forever on the wheels of enterprise, and in the end will
assert their supremacy, to the ruin and shame of their victim.
[Illustration: PERSONAL INFLUENCE.]
"I shot an arrow in the air;
It fell on earth, I knew not where.
* * * * *
I breathed a song into the air;
It fell on earth, I knew not where.
* * * * *
Long, long afterwards, in an oak,
I found the arrow still unbroke,
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."
—H. W. LONGFELLOW.
[Illustration]