Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/157

 When our companion fails us we transfer our love instantaneously to a worthy object,—as the sunlight which gilds the walls and fences, when these are removed falls instantaneously on the mountains and domes and spires in the horizon Actually I have no friend. I am very distant from all actual persons,—and yet my experience of friendship is so real and engrossing that I sometimes find myself speaking aloud to the ideal friend.

A friend in need is not a friend indeed,—for all the world are our friends then. What we need is a friend. He is not our friend who visits us only when we are sick, but he whose preventive visits keep us well,—who never lets us need I delight to come to my bearing, not walk in procession with pomp and parade, but to walk with the builder of the universe; not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial nineteenth century, but to stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.

We hesitate to call our friends our brothers and our sisters; for the name attaches but to a part of them; for they are more than half [109]