t he does or says, or does not do or say, but what he is:
that is eternally enough.

Of course, it does sometimes happen that we think we have made a friend,
and on closer acquaintance we find things in him that are alien to our
very being; but even so, such a friendship often survives, if we have
given our heart, or if affection has been bestowed upon us--affection
which we cannot doubt. Some of the richest friendships of all are
friendships between people whose whole view of life is sharply
contrasted; and then what blessed energy can be employed in defending
one's friend, in explaining him to other people, in minimising faults,
in emphasising virtues! "While the thunder lasted," says the old Indian
proverb, "two bad men were friends." That means that a common danger
will sometimes draw even malevolent people together. But, for most of
us, the only essential thing to friendship is a kind of mutual trust and
confidence. It does not even shake our faith to know that our friend may
play other people false: we feel by a kind of secret instinct that he
will not play us false; and even if it be proved incontestably that he
has played us false, why, we believe that he will not do so again, and
we have all the pleasure of forgiveness.

Who shall explain the extraordinary instinct that tells us, perhaps
after a single meeting, that this or that particular person in some
mysterious way matters to us? The person in question may have no
attractive gifts of intellect or manner or personal appearance; but
there is some strange bond between us; we seem to have shared experience
together, somehow and somewhere; he is interesting, whether he speaks or
is silent, whether he agrees or disagrees. We feel that in some secret
region he is congenial. Est mihi nescio quid quod me tibi temperat
astrum, says the old Latin poet--"There is something, I know not what,
which yokes our fortunes, yours and mine." Sometimes indeed we are
mistaken, and the momentary nearness fades and grows cold. But it is
not often so. That peculiar motion of the heart, that secret joining of
hands, is based upon something deep and vital, some spiritual kinship,
some subtle likeness.

Of course, we differ vastly in our power of attracting and feeling
attraction. I confess that, for myself, I never enter a new company
without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps THE friend,
sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand
disappointmen