ship
withers through sheer neglect. Hearts are alienated, because each is
waiting for some great occasion for displaying affection. The great
spiritual value of friendship lies in the opportunities it affords for
service, and if these are neglected it is only to be expected that the
gift should be taken from us. Friendship, which begins with sentiment,
will not live and thrive on sentiment. There must be loyalty, which
finds expression in service. It is not the greatness of the help, or
the intrinsic value of the gift, which gives it its worth, but the
evidence it is of love and thoughtfulness.

Attention to detail is the secret of success in every sphere of life,
and little kindnesses, little acts of considerateness, little
appreciations, little confidences, are all that most of us are called
on to perform, but they are all that are needed to keep a friendship
sweet. Such thoughtfulness keeps our sentiment in evidence to both
parties. If we never show our kind feeling, what guarantee has our
friend, or even ourself, that it exists? Faithfulness in deed is the
outward result of constancy of soul, which is the rarest, and the
greatest, of virtues. If there has come to us the miracle of
friendship, if there is a soul to which our soul has been drawn, it is
surely worth while being loyal and true. Through the little occasions
for helpfulness, we are training for the great trial, if it should ever
come, when the fabric of friendship will be tested to the very
foundation. The culture of friendship, and its abiding worth, never
found nobler expression than in the beautiful proverb,[3] "A friend
loveth at all times, and is a brother born for adversity."

Most men do not deserve such a gift from heaven. They look upon it as
a convenience, and accept the privilege of love without the
responsibility of it. They even use their friends for their own
selfish purposes, and so never have true friends. Some men shed
friends at every step they rise in the social scale. It is mean and
contemptible to merely use men, so long as they further one's personal
interests. But there is a nemesis on such heartlessness. To such can
never come the ecstasy and comfort of mutual trust. This worldly
policy can never truly succeed. It stands to reason that they cannot
have brothers born for adversity, and cannot count on the joy of the
love that loveth at all times; for they do not possess the quality
which secures it. To act on t