ir friends that do. In short, though
they have many estates, they know them all; but though they have but few
friends, yet they know not the number of them; insomuch that if they are
desired to name them, they are puzzled immediately, so little are their
friends in their thoughts. Nevertheless, there is nothing comparable to
a good friend; no slave is so affectionate to our person or interest; no
horse can render us so great service; in a word, nothing is so useful to
us in all occasions. For a true friend supplies all the wants and
answers all the demands of another, either in the conduct of his private
affairs or in the management of the public. If, for instance, his friend
be obliged to do a kindness to any man, he puts him in the way of it; if
he be assaulted with any danger he immediately flies to his relief. At
one time he gives him part of his estate, at another he assists him with
the labour of his hands; sometimes he helps him to persuade, sometimes he
aids him to compel; in prosperity he heightens his delight by rejoicing
with him; in adversity he diminisheth his sorrows by bearing a share of
them. The use a man may make of his hands, his eyes, his ears, his feet,
is nothing at all when compared with the service one friend may render
another. For often what we cannot do for our own advantage, what we have
not seen, nor thought, nor heard of, when our own interests were
concerned, what we have not pursued for ourselves, a friend has done for
his friend. How foolish were it to be at so much trouble in cultivating
a small orchard of trees, because we expect some fruit from it, and yet
be at no pains to cultivate that which is instead of a whole estate--I
mean Friendship--a soil the most glorious and fertile where we are sure
to gather the fairest and best of fruit!"

CHAPTER V. OF THE WORTH AND VALUE OF FRIENDS.

To what I have advanced above I shall here relate another discourse of
his, as far as I can remember, in which he exhorted his hearers to
examine themselves, that they might know what value their friends might
set upon them; for seeing a man who had abandoned his friend in extreme
poverty, he asked Antisthenes this question in presence of that very man
and several others: "Can we set a price upon friends as we do upon
slaves? One slave may be worth twenty crowns, another not worth five;
such a one will cost fifty crowns, another will yield a hundred. Nay, I
am told that Nicias, the son o