for him to that for friends of later date. The truth is, we
knew each other!

This, together with youthful and happy associations, is the secret of
all those lasting friendships commenced in boyhood. We feel, however
we may try to conceal it, that our acquaintances in later life may be
playing a part, or at all events, may be guided more or less by
interested motives; while, on the other hand, should sad experience
not have taught us the same policy, it will inevitably happen, that
sooner or later we shall have to deplore our imprudence. It is not so
much that we are betrayed as misconstrued; our opinions are
misinterpreted from ignorance of our real dispositions. This, then, is
why it has become so imperative on us to shroud ourselves in reserve;
and, alas! the more so as our dispositions may be sanguine and ardent.
Hence, too, the Lord Chesterfield's scouted maxim, "Do not be, but
seem," though his lordship is not to be reprobated so much as the
world, that compelled him thus to advise his own son. But I fear I
shall be found fault with by both parties, as I have learnt to be, but
not to seem.

No wonder, then, that we hasten to renew our early friendships, and
throw aside all this deplorable restraint.

"Your father is a horrid radical," I once heard a boy say to the Lord
Chancellor's son.

"And your mother is his Majesty's mistress," was the retort, in even
plainer language.

This is adopting the other extreme, but will here serve as a sample of
that youthful openness, however ridiculous and disagreeable, which
teaches us at once how to choose our friends and confidants, with
little fear of being mistaken; and when we have arrived at manhood,
whatever number of years may have separated us, we are still conscious
of each other's nature, because we have learnt, in the meantime, that
it never changes, in whatever degree it may have done so in
appearance. Let any one, for a moment, bestow his attention upon some
prominent person of the present day, whose character may contrast with
what it was in boyhood, and has he confidence in him? in other words,
is he imposed upon with the rest? He may cling to him for auld lang
syne, but he will be far from being deceived, while the other is as
conscious that he is not so.

For this reason, I have always thought well of those who have carried
on their early intimacy to after-life. One of them must be creditable
to our race, for I have noticed friendship between two indiff