ayings that are oftener on our lips.
"Do you think him beyond further effort?" I said lately to a good man
concerning one in whom we were both interested--a young man fast
heading towards ruin. "I am afraid there is, humanly speaking, no
hope," was the answer; "he has taken up with company that forbids it."

When we are young we are apt to evolve friendships out of our
imagination. We do not so much prove them as create them, according to
the impulses and undisciplined generosities of our disposition. It is
only time, here as elsewhere, that can teach us how much there is that
is human about the best of friends. But how much may have been done,
for better or for worse, before we realize that the angels have gone
away only because they were never here? As we get older outside
friendships count for less. Life fills with other interests, or it
empties in a sense friendships can never fill. If we who are older
have carried into the later years one or two, or two or three,
well-laid, well-tested and useful friendships, let us be very thankful,
and cherish them. They are pearls of great price, for no friends are
like old friends, and as they drop off we have to make the best we can
of acquaintances. It is when we are young that we have the genius for
friendships; they are, indeed, a necessary part of our life. And
whether or not it is much use to warn young people about the formation
of friendships, the warning is seriously needed. Much will be
determined by affinities and by mutual sympathies. You may have to
sample many friendships before you find a friend. And while it is
difficult, not to say impossible, to lay down rules where affinities
are involved, one thing you can do, you can allow the moral instinct to
decide, as it can decide, whether in the real interests of character a
given friendship is worth cultivation. If you realize that you must
surrender something of your better self to be the friend of a certain
person, you will be almost sure to establish that friendship at your
peril. It is far harder to save your life than it is to lose it, and
the chances are, not that you will lift the friendship up to your
level, but that it will pull you down to its own.

These remarks on the general subject of personal friendship are
warranted by its importance. But there is another aspect of it which,
as a question of widespread and deep-seated influence, is even more
important. And it is one that is too rarel