es everything it touches. When on a stormy
night our friend comes in he seems to warm the very fire upon the
hearth; he sweetens the sweet singer's voice; lends new meaning to the
wise man's words; gives reminiscence an added charm; makes old stories
new; makes the laughter and smiles come twice as often and stay twice
as long. Friendship lies upon the heart like a warm fire upon the
hearth. By reason of friendship history exhibits every great man as
leaving his school of thought and a group of disciples behind him. His
spirit lingers with men long after his form has disappeared from the
streets, as the sun lingers in the clouds after the day is done, as the
melody lingers in the ear long after the song is sung. Longfellow,
after a day and a night with Emerson, literally emitted poems and
plays. He was stimulated by friendship as bees by rose liquor and the
sweet pea wine. Friendship always makes the heart plastic. Then the
mental furrows are all open and mellow; sympathy falls like dew and
rain; then the heart saith to its friend: "Here am I, all plastic to
your touch; work upon me your will; for good or ill--I am thine."
Therefore, friendship imposes frightful responsibilities; in asking and
receiving it we assume charge of another's destiny. This is the very
genius of the teacher's influence over his pupil, the parent's over his
child, the general's over his soldier, the patriot's over his people.
Better a thousand times never open the furrow than to leave it
unfertilized.

How strategic life's better hours! One of God's precious gifts is the
luminous hour that denies the lower animal mood. Mind is not always at
its best. Full oft our thought is sodden and dull. Then duty seems a
maze without a clew and life's skeins all a tangle. The mind is
uneasy, confused and troubled. Then men live to the eye and the ear
and physical comforts; they live for houses and beautiful things in
them; for shelves and rich goods upon them; for factories and large
profits by them. Responsibility to God seems like the faint shadow of
a vaguely remembered dream. The voice of conscience is in the ear like
the far-off murmuring of the sea. The soul is sordid and the finer
senses indurated. The angel of the better nature is bondslave to the
worst. Then enters some element that nurtures the nobler impulse.
Some misfortune, earthquake-like, cleaves through the hard crust. Or
some gentle event, like the coming of an old frien