e it, there must be forethought, and care, and love
expended as before.

Friendship may lapse through the _misfortune of distance_. Absence
does not always make the heart grow fonder. It only does so, when the
heart is securely fixed, and when it is a heart worth fixing. More
often the other proverb is truer, that it is out of sight out of mind.
It is so easy for a man to become self-centred, and to impoverish his
affections through sheer neglect. Ties once close get frayed and
strained till they break, and we discover that we have said farewell to
the past. Some kind of intercourse is needed to maintain friendship.
There is a pathos about this gradual drifting away of lives, borne from
each other, it sometimes seems, by opposing tides, as if a resistless
power separated them,

And bade betwixt their souls to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Or friendship may lapse through the _fault of silence_. The misfortune
of distance may be overcome by love, but the fault of silence crushes
out feeling as the falling rain kills the kindling beacon. Even the
estrangements and misunderstandings which will arise to all could not
long remain, where there is a frank and candid interchange of thought.
Hearts grow cold toward each other through neglect. There is a
suggestive word from the old Scandinavian _Edda_, "Go often to the
house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path." It is
hard to overcome again the alienation caused by neglect; for there
grows up a sense of resentment and injured feeling.

Among the petty things which wreck friendships, none is so common and
so unworthy as money. It is pitiable that it should be so. Thackeray
speaks of the remarkable way in which a five-pound note will break up a
half-century's attachment between two brethren, and it is a common
cynical remark of the world that the way to lose a friend is to lend
him money. There is nothing which seems to affect the mind more, and
color the very heart's blood, than money. There seems a curse in it
sometimes, so potent is it for mischief. Poverty, if it be too
oppressive grinding down the face, may often hurt the heart-life; but
perhaps oftener still it only reveals what true treasures there are in
the wealth of the affections. Whereas, we know what heartburnings, and
rivalries, and envyings, are occasioned by this golden apple of
discord. Most of the disputes which separate brethren are about the
dividing of th