y to pay in coin as
good as I get, but I recognize it as a lawless procedure, For the coin I
give (being such as I myself secretly make) is for them sometimes only
spurious metal, while what I get is for me the very treasure of the
Indies. For a lift in my wagon, a drink at the door, a flying word
across my fences, I have taken argosies of minted wealth!

Especially do I enjoy all travelling people. I wait for them (how
eagerly) here on my farm. I watch the world drift by in daily tides upon
the road, flowing outward in the morning toward the town, and as surely
at evening drifting back again. I look out with a pleasure impossible to
convey upon those who come this way from the town: the Syrian woman
going by in the gray town road, with her bright-coloured head-dress, and
her oil-cloth pack; and the Old-ironman with his dusty wagon, jangling
his little bells, and the cheerful weazened Herb-doctor in his faded
hat, and the Signman with his mouth full of nails--how they are all
marked upon by the town, all dusted with the rosy bloom of human
experience. How often in fancy I have pursued them down the valley and
watched them until they drifted out of sight beyond the hill! Or how
often I have stopped them or they (too willingly) have stopped me--and
we have fenced and parried with fine bold words.

If you should ever come by my farm--you, whoever you are--take care lest
I board you, hoist my pirate flag, and sail you away to the Enchanted
Isle where I make my rendezvous.

It is not short of miraculous how, with cultivation, one's capacity for
friendship increases. Once I myself had scarcely room in my heart for a
single friend, who am now so wealthy in friendships. It is a phenomenon
worthy of consideration by all hardened disbelievers in that which is
miraculous upon this earth that when a man's heart really opens to a
friend he finds there room for two, And when he takes in the second,
behold the skies lift, and the earth grows wider, and he finds there
room for two more!

In a curious passage (which I understand no longer darkly) old mystical
Swedenborg tells of his wonderment that the world of spirits (which he
says he visited so familiarly) should not soon become too small for all
the swelling hosts of its ethereal inhabitants, and was confronted with
the discovery that the more angels there were, the more heaven to hold
them!

So let it be with our friendships!

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's