s, to have nothing in
our lives that we wouldn't buy, to possess nothing that is not sensitive
to us, ready to ring a fairy chime of association at our slightest touch:
no irrelevant book, picture, acquaintance, or activity--ah me! you may
well say it is an ideal. Yes, it is what men have meant by El Dorado, The
Promised Land, and all such shy haunts of the Beatific Vision. Probably
the quest of the Philosopher's Stone is not more wild. Yet men still seek
that precious substitute for Midas. Brave spirits! Unconquerable
idealists! Salt of the earth!

But if it be admitted that the quest of the Perfect Relation (in two
senses) is hopeless, yet there is no reason why we should not approach as
near to it as we can.

We can at least begin by barring the irrelevant person--in other words,
choosing our own acquaintance. Of course, we have no entire free-will in
so important a matter. Free-will is like the proverbial policeman, never
there when most wanted. There are two classes of more or less irrelevant
persons that cannot be entirely avoided: our blood-relations, and our
business-relations--both often so pathetically distinct from our
heart-relations and our brain-relations. Well, our business-relations need
not trouble us over much. They are not, as the vermin-killer advertisement
has it, 'pests of the household.' They come out only during business
hours. The curse of the blood-relation, however, is that he infests your
leisure moments; and you must notice the pathos of that verbal
distinction: man measures his toil by 'hours' (office-hours), his leisure
by 'moments!'

But let not the reader mistake me for a Nero. The claims of a certain
degree of blood-relationship I not only admit, but welcome as a sacred
joy. Their experience is unhappy for whom the bonds of parentage, of
sisterhood and brotherhood, will not always have a sort of involuntary
religion. If a man should not exactly be tied to his mother's
apron-string, he should all his life remain tied to her by that other
mysterious cord which no knife can sever. Uncles and aunts may, under
certain circumstances, be regarded as sacred, and meet for occasional
burnt-offerings; but beyond them I hold that the knot of
blood-relationship may be regarded as Gordian, and ruthlessly cut. Cousins
have no claims. Indeed, the scale of the legacy duties, like few
legalities, follows the natural law. The further removed, the greater tax
should our blood-relations pay for our love,