born married--dislikes to be
one of a herd. Friendship, like love, is among autocrats, the most
autocratic. There is no such thing as communism among the passions.
But, as I said before, the people worth getting to know are so difficult
to get to know. One has to hack away, as it were, and keep on hacking
away, until one breaks through the crusts of reserve and prejudice and
shyness which always surround the "soul" of pure gold--or, in fact, the
"soul" of any type or quality. But "to hack" is a very dull occupation:
that is why I say all beginnings are difficult when they are not merely
drab. I always secretly envy the people who let themselves be known
quite easily, although I realise that, when you get to know them, there
is usually very little worth knowing. But there are so many lonely men
and women wandering through this sad old world of ours who are lonely,
not because there is not plenty of sympathy and understanding ready, as
it were, to be tapped by the rod of friendship and love, but because they
are too shy to make friends, too reserved to show the genius of
friendship which burns within them. So they go through the world with
open arms which merely clasp thin air. They are too difficult to get to
know, and they do not possess the key which unlocks the secret of
dignified "self-revelation." Between them and the world there is thrust
a mask of reserve and shyness--a mask the expression of which they
positively hate, but are unable to tear it down from their faces. Thus
they live lonely in a world of other lonely souls; no one can help them,
and they are too timid of rebuff to help themselves.

But Friendship cannot be cultivated and tended by a third party--that is
an axiom. It either springs to life inevitably or, metaphorically
speaking, it doesn't turn a hair. The well-meaning person who introduces
one friend to another with the supreme assurance that they will both get
on splendidly together, usually begins by making two people enemies. The
friends of friends are very rarely friends with one another. And
jealousy is not entirely the cause of this immediate estrangement. One
friend appeals to one side of your nature and another friend appeals to a
different side, but very, very rarely do you find two people who make the
same appeal--since Heaven only knows how great is the physical attraction
in Friendship as well as in Love! On the whole, then, the wise man and
woman keep their friends apar