Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/192

Rh and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.

“Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, and know his mother, and brother, and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me as a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him I want; but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighbourly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and quiet as Nature herself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, but raise it to that standard.

“Worship his superiorities. Wish him not less by a thought, but hoard and tell him all. Guard him as thy great counterpart; have a princedom to thy friend. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untameable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside.

“What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or to say anything to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom; and for you to say aught is