Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/442

428 You cheat me, you keep me at a distance with your manners. I know of no other dishonesty, no other devil. Why this doubleness, these compliments? They are the worst of lies. A lie is not worse between traders than a compliment between friends. I would not, I cannot speak. I will let you feel my thought, my feeling.—Friends! They are united for good, for evil. They can delight each other as none other can. Lying on lower levels is but a trivial offense compared with civility and compliments on the level of Friendship.

I visit my friend for joy, not for disturbance. If my coming hinders him in the least conceivable degree, I will exert myself to the utmost to stay away. I will get the Titans to help me stand aloof, will labor night and day to construct a rampart between us. If my coming casts but the shadow of a shadow before it, I will retreat swifter than the wind, and more untrackable. I will be gone irrevocably, if possible, before he fears that I am coming.

If the teeth ache, they can be pulled. If the heart aches, what then? Shall we pluck it out?

Must friends then expect the fate of those oriental twins, that one shall at last bear about the corpse of the other, by that same ligature that bound him to a living companion?

Look before you leap. Let the isthmus be