s
as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man
should keep his friendships in constant repair!"

ALL THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF THE SAGES

on this subject there is a tinge of melancholy. "There are no friends!"
says Aristotle. "There have been fewer friends on earth than Kings," says
the poet Cowley. Why is this? Let us peer into the solemn question. The
ideal of true manhood is easily formulated. Alas! what an abyss
separates a man's daily life, as it is, from that high quality he has
pictured in his imagination. We are all the time reaching for

THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND,

and could not assimilate with if they were placed at our disposal. In
this way a weary, well-read novel-reader, worn out in all lines of light
letters, enters a circulating library, and queruously asks: "Have you
any new books?" She expects a negative answer, and in that case would
suffer a keen disappointment. The man says "Yes," and brings out several
new books. Every one of these is new in every sense. It may be the most
trivial set of pages yet printed in this era of scribblers, or, yet, it
may be a great work, worthy of the attention of the thoughtful, and the
commendation of the pure in heart. Nobody can tell. Then, illogically,
she asks: "Is this good?" or "Is that good?" and upon being reminded
that she wanted something new or nothing, she asks for something by May
Agnes Fleming, or Mary Jane Holmes, and goes off happy, to re-read those
expressions which have so well pleased her in the past.

I think I espy in this exhibition of the working of the mind in a rude
and unsatisfactory state

A GENERAL PRINCIPLE,

just as potent in the mighty brain of Sir Isaac Newton or of Louis
Agassiz. Man idealizes the affair of friendship. He forgets whether he
really wants it or not, and then persistently inquires for it. It is not
in the library of possibilities. He therefore goes off angry and
disappointed. Could he get a glimpse at it, I am afraid he would walk
away satisfied with something more nearly en rapport with his nature and
his habits. Let us view this golden word friendship as man idealizes it:
Being a changeable thing, he views friendship (of which he knows
nothing), entirely by comparison with something of which in its turn he
knows but little. This something is always a mother's love for her son,
notorious as the strongest affection shown by our species. He therefore
doubles up this marvelous fact of