the very name of school. If school friends talk much
school gossip, they must weaken their minds and feel at a loss when out
of their school set. It is very "provincial" to have no conversation
except the small gossip which would bore a stranger, and yet I fear many
friends confine themselves to a kind of talk which unfits them for general
society. You prohibit "talking shop," by which you sometimes mean subjects
which are interesting to all intelligent people, and yet you talk
gossiping "shop" about the mere accidents of school life. But, unless you
interweave thoughtful interests and sensible topics of conversation with
your friendship, it cannot last. There must be the tie of a common higher
interest--it may be a common work, or intellectual sympathy, or, best of
all, oneness in the highest things--but without this a mere personal fancy
will not stand the monotony, much less the rubs and jars, of close
intimacy. A friendship, where the personal affection is the deepest
feeling, is not a deep love, or of a high kind;--we must in the widest
sense love "honour more." "Love is a primary affection in those who love
little: a secondary one in those who love much" (Coleridge).

A stool must have three legs if it is to support you, and two friends want
a third interest to unite them, or the friendship will die away in
unreasonable claims and jealousies; since "claimativeness" is the evil
genius which haunts friendship, unless common sense and wholesome
interests are at hand to help. It is difficult, but necessary, to learn
that affection is not a matter of will, except in family ties; that our
friends love us in exact proportion as we appear to them lovable, that
"the less you claim, the more you will have," as the Duke of Wellington
said of authority. A very little humility would wonderfully lessen our
demands upon our friends' affections, and a very little wisdom would
preserve us from trying to win them by reproaches. How many coolnesses
would be avoided could we learn to see that friendship, like all other
relations of life, has more duties than rights. Nothing so certainly kills
love as reproaches; I do not believe any affection will stand it. Our hurt
feelings may seem to us tenderness and depth of feeling, but they are
selfish:--"fine feelings seldom result in fine conduct." If our love were
perfectly selfless, we should be glad of all pleasure for our friend;
failure in his allegiance to us would not change us, nothin