uriously astray. We have
worked along beside them, have consorted with them drunk or sober, have
grown to cherish their delicious absurdities, have outrageously imposed
on each other's patience--and suddenly we awoke to realize what had
happened. We had, without knowing it, gained a new friend. In some
curious way the unseen border line had been passed. We had reached the
final culmination of Anglo-Saxon regard when two men rarely look each
other straight in the eyes because they are ashamed to show each other
how fond they are. We had reached the fine flower and the ultimate test
of comradeship--that is, when you get a letter from one of your "best
friends," you know you don't need to answer it until you get ready to.

Emerson is right in saying that friendship can't be hurried. It takes
time to ripen. It needs a background of humorous, wearisome, or even
tragic events shared together, a certain tract of memories shared in
common, so that you know that your own life and your companion's have
really moved for some time in the same channel. It needs interchange of
books, meals together, discussion of one another's whims with mutual
friends, to gain a proper perspective. It is set in a rich haze of
half-remembered occasions, sudden glimpses, ludicrous pranks,
unsuspected observations, midnight confidences when heart spoke to
candid heart.

[Illustration]

The soul preaches humility to itself when it realizes, startled, that
it has won a new friend. Knowing what a posset of contradictions we all
are, it feels a symptom of shame at the thought that our friend knows
all our frailties and yet thinks us worth affection. We all have cause
to be shamefast indeed; for whereas we love ourselves in spite of our
faults, our friends often love us even on account of our faults, the
highest level to which attachment can go. And what an infinite appeal
there is in their faces! How we grow to cherish those curious little
fleshy cages--so oddly sculptured--which inclose the spirit within. To
see those faces, bent unconsciously over their tasks--each different,
each unique, each so richly and queerly expressive of the lively and
perverse enigma of man, is a full education in human tolerance.
Privately, one studies his own ill-modeled visnomy to see if by any
chance it bespeaks the emotions he inwardly feels. We know--as Hamlet
did--the vicious mole of nature in us, the o'ergrowth of some complexion
that mars the purity of our secret res