. From the
invulnerable fortress of his own nature he smiles contemptuously on the
beleaguering armies of your curiosity and analysis. And it is not only
the stranger that thus defeats you; it may be the brother brought up by
the same fireside with you, the best friend whom you have known from
early school and college days, the very child, perhaps, that bears your
name, and with whose moral and mental apparatus you think you are as
familiar as with your own. In the midst of the most amicable
relationships and the best understandings, human beings are, at times,
conscious of a cold feeling of strangeness--the friend is actuated by a
feeling which never could actuate you, some hitherto unknown part of
his character becomes visible, and while at one moment you stood in
such close neighbourhood, that you could feel his arm touch your own,
in the next there is a feeling of removal, of distance, of empty space
betwixt him and you in which the wind is blowing. You and he become
separate entities. He is related to you as Border peel is related to
Border peel on Tweedside, or as ship is related to ship on the sea. It
is not meant that any quarrel or direct misunderstanding should have
taken place, simply that feeling of foreignness is meant to be
indicated which occurs now and then in the intercourse of the most
affectionate; which comes as a harsh reminder to friends and lovers
that with whatsoever flowery bands they may be linked, they are
separated persons, who understand, and can only understand, each other
partially. It is annoying to be put out in our notions of men and
women thus, and to be forced to rearrange them. It is a misfortune to
have to manoeuvre one's heart as a general has to manoeuvre his army.
The globe has been circumnavigated, but no man ever yet has; you may
survey a kingdom and note the result in maps, but all the servants in
the world could not produce a reliable map of the poorest human
personality. And the worst of all this is, that love and friendship
may be the outcome of a certain condition of knowledge; increase the
knowledge, and love and friendship beat their wings and go. Every
man's road in life is marked by the graves of his personal likings.
Intimacy is frequently the road to indifference, and marriage a
parricide. From these accidents to the affections, and from the
efforts to repair them, life has in many a patched and tinkered look.

Love and friendship are the discoveries of ou