omes to that--it is quite another matter.

The supreme gift and grace and enchantment of life is in sympathetic
companionship. And this, in its truer sense, is a relation of spirit, an
elective affinity, rather than a mere concurrence of intellectual or
artistic tastes. It is quite possible for two persons to like Sargent's
pictures, or to draw the line at the inane "society" play without, after
all, finding themselves in any relations of especial sympathy. "Only
that soul can be my friend," said Emerson, "which I encounter on the
line of my own march; that soul to which I do not decline, and which
does not decline to me, but, native of the same celestial latitude,
repeats in its own all my experience." Margaret Fuller defined this
sympathy as that of beings born under the same star. But phrases are of
little worth,--the experience eludes all definitions and defies all
phrasings. It exists by divine right, or it does not exist at all. It is
a law unto itself. It is a recognition that has to do with the inward
springs of thought and action.

Companionship is the inflorescence of social life,--its finest result,
its most exquisite and perfect ideal. But it requires a certain degree
of fitness. It requires the choice organization, the nobler and the
finer degree of spiritual development. The crude person can pass well
enough in a social assemblage, but only the choicer individuality is fit
for that finer and more subtle relation of companionship.

Yet this highest realization of social enjoyment is, for the most part,
relegated to shreds and patches of time. The mornings must be given to
lectures, readings, receptions, clubs, and teas; the evenings must be
devoted to dinners, dances, opera, concerts, plays, or musicales. For
communion of friend with friend, spirit with spirit, there is no time.
The crowning joy of life, in its possibilities for sympathetic
companionship, is ignored. For companionship is a spiritual joy, and
society recognizes only the spectacular pleasures. The finer order of
social life for which the world were well lost, awaits its evolution.

* * * * *

"The life a man lives and the life he ought to live belong together. The
real and the ideal lie side by side in the thought of God."

The distractions of life are every day's tragedy. The mutilation of
purpose, the disintegration of time, the neutralization of all endeavor,
which result from the perpetual occurrence of