a friend who considers them rich and splendid. "A
gift should represent common ground."

This is so well said that it sounds like the easy thing it isn't.
Which of us has not nobly striven, and ignobly failed, to preserve
our honest purpose without challenging the taste of our friends? It
is hard to tell what people really prize. Heine begged for a button
from George Sand's trousers, and who shall say whether enthusiasm
or malice prompted the request? Mr. Oscar Browning, who as Master
at Eton must have known whereof he spoke, insisted that it was a
mistake to give a boy a well-bound book if you expected him to read
it. Yet binding plays a conspicuous part in the selection of
Christmas and birthday presents. Dr. Johnson went a step farther,
and said that nobody wanted to read _any_ book which was given to
him;--the mere fact that it was given, instead of being bought,
borrowed, or ravished from a friend's shelves, militated against its
readable qualities. Perhaps the Doctor was thinking of authors'
copies. Otherwise the remark is the most discouraging one on record.

Yet when all the ungracious things have been said and forgotten, when
the hard old proverbs have exhausted their unwelcome wisdom, and we
have smiled wearily over the deeper cynicisms of Richelieu and
Talleyrand, where shall we turn for relief but to Emerson, who has
atoned in his own fashion for the harshness of his own words. It is
not only that he recognizes the goodness of the man who receives a
gift well; but he sees, and sees clearly, that there can be no
question between friends of giving or receiving, no possible room
for generosity or gratitude. "The gift to be true must be the flowing
of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the
waters are at a level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All
his are mine, all mine, his."

Critics have been disposed to think that this is an elevation too
lofty for plain human beings to climb, an air too rarified for them
to breathe; and that it ill befitted a man who churlishly resented
the simple, stupid kindnesses of life, to take so sublime a tone,
to claim so fine a virtue. We cannot hope to scale great moral heights
by ignoring petty obligations.

Yet Emerson does not go a step beyond Plato in his conception of the
"level waters" of friendship. He states his position lucidly, and
with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision
is wide enough to embrace its eve