ariety.

Thus it is in our childish days. And are not the majority of us still
children? Should our favourite books be placed out of our reach, should
it be impossible for us to turn their pages, it is certain that we would
feel a loss, a gap. Were we old enough to comprehend Emerson's
philosophy, we might endeavour to buoy ourselves up with the thought that
thus we were at one with him in his nobility and loftiness of sentiment.
And yet there would be something childish and pathetic in the endeavour,
by reason of its very unreality. Certainly if Providence should, either
directly or indirectly, separate us from our friends, by all means let us
accept the separation bravely. It cannot destroy our friendship. But
seldom to use our friends, from the apparently epicurean point of view of
Emerson, would be a forced and unnatural doctrine to the majority, as
unnatural as if a child should bury Hans Andersen's fairy tales for fear
of tiring of them. It would savour more of present and actual distaste,
than the love which fears its approach. There is the familiarity which
breeds contempt, truly; but there is also the familiarity which daily
ties closer bonds, draws to closer union.

Antony had established a friendship with the lady of the blue book. The
book had been responsible for its beginning. With Emerson's definition of
friendship he would probably have been largely in harmony; not so in his
treatment of it. With the following, he would have been at one, with the
exception of a word or so:--"I must feel pride in my friend's
accomplishments as if they were mine,--wild, delicate, throbbing property
in his virtues. I feel as warmly when he is praised, as the lover when he
hears applause of his engaged maiden. We over-estimate the conscience of
our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature
finer, his temptations less. Everything that is his, his name, his form,
his dress, books, and instruments, fancy enhances. Our own thought sounds
new and larger from his mouth."

Most true, Antony would have declared, if you will eliminate
"over-estimate," and substitute "is" for "seems."

Unlike Emerson, he made no attempt to analyse his friendship. He accepted
it as a gift from the gods. Maybe somewhere in his inner consciousness,
barely articulate even to his own heart, he dreamt of it as a foundation
to something further. Yet for the present, the foundation sufficed.
Death-letters--he laughed joyously at the c