They are the end and the
reward of life. They keep us worthy of. ourselves; and
when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.
*
We are all INCOMPRIS, only more or less concerned for the
mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at
each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap-dogs. Sometimes
we catch an eye-this is our opportunity in the ages-and we
wag our tail with a poor smile. 'IS THAT ALL?' All? If
you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love
us; the more fools we to squander life on the indifferent.
But the morality of the thing, you will be glad to hear,
is excellent; for it is only by trying to understand
others that we can get our own hearts understood; and
in matters of human feeling the clement judge is the
most successful pleader.
*
There is no friendship so noble, but it is the product of
the time; and a world of little finical observances, and
little frail proprieties and fashions of the hour, go to
make or to mar, to stint or to perfect, the union of
spirits the most loving and the most intolerant of such
interference. The trick of the country and the age steps
in even between the mother and her child, counts out their
caresses upon niggardly fingers, and says, in the voice of
authority, that this one thing shall be a matter of
confidence between them, and this other thing shall not.
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