akage
has occurred, we must go back and patiently join the threads together
again. Thoughtlessness has done more harm in this respect than
ill-will. If we have lost a friend through selfish neglect, the loss
is ours, and we cannot expect to take up the story where we left off
years ago. There is a serene impudence about the treatment some mete
out to their friends, dropping them whenever it suits, and thinking to
take them up when it happens once more to suit. We cannot expect to
walk with another, when we have gone for miles along another way. We
will have to go back, and catch him up again. If the fault has been
ours, desire and shame will give our feet wings.

The real source of separation is ultimately a spiritual one. We cannot
walk with another unless we are agreed. The lapse of friendship is
often due to this, that one has let the other travel on alone. If one
has sought pleasure, and the other has sought truth; if one has
cumbered his life with the trivial and the petty, and the other has
filled his with high thoughts and noble aspirations; if their hearts
are on different levels, it is natural that they should now be apart.
We cannot stay behind with the camp-followers, and at the same time
fight in the van with the heroes. If we would keep our best friends,
we must go with them in sympathy, and be able to share their thoughts.
In the letters of Dean Stanley, there is one from Jowett to Stanley,
which brings out this necessity. "I earnestly hope that the
friendship, which commenced between us many years ago, may be a
blessing to last us through life. I feel that if it is to be so we
must both go onward, otherwise the tear and wear of life, and the
'having travelled over each other's minds,' and a thousand accidents
will be sufficient to break it off. I have often felt the inability to
converse with you, but never for an instant the least alienation.
There is no one who would not think me happy in having such a friend."

It is not, however, so much the equal pace of the mind which is
necessary, as the equal pace of the spirit. We may think about a very
brilliant friend that he will outstrip us, and outgrow us. The fear is
natural, but if there be spiritual oneness it is an unfounded fear.

Yet oft, when sundown skirts the moor,
An inner trouble I behold,
A spectral doubt which makes me cold,
That I should be thy mate no more.

But love is not dependent on intellect. The great bond of