dead so long as to be indifferent to it. It is more
comfortable to hate people we have never seen. I cannot but think that
Judas Iscariot has been of great service to the world as a sort of
buffer for moral indignation which might have made a collision nearer
home but for his utilized treachery. I used to know a venerable and most
amiable gentleman and scholar, whose hospitable house was always overrun
with wayside ministers, agents, and philanthropists, who loved their
fellow-men better than they loved to work for their living; and he, I
suspect, kept his moral balance even by indulgence in violent but most
distant dislikes. When I met him casually in the street, his first
salutation was likely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was!
Don't you hate him?" And then would follow specifications of historical
inveracity enough to make one's blood run cold. When he was thus
discharged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not a
spark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him and other
generous souls.

Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy night by
the fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionally playing
with the piano-keys in an improvising mood. Mandeville has a good deal
of sentiment about him, and without any effort talks so beautifully
sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report his language. He has,
besides, that sympathy of presence--I believe it is called magnetism
by those who regard the brain as only a sort of galvanic battery--which
makes it a greater pleasure to see him think, if I may say so, than to
hear some people talk.

It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so many rare
people he can never know; and so many excellent people that scarcely any
one will know, in fact. One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but
feel regret that twenty or thirty years of life maybe have been spent
without the least knowledge of him. When he is once known, through him
opening is made into another little world, into a circle of culture
and loving hearts and enthusiasm in a dozen congenial pursuits, and
prejudices perhaps. How instantly and easily the bachelor doubles his
world when he marries, and enters into the unknown fellowship of the to
him continually increasing company which is known in popular language as
"all his wife's relations."

Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, if one
had