on can pure friendship
be maintained.

THE VIRTUE.

+The true friend is one we can rely upon.+--Our deepest secrets, our
tenderest feelings, our frankest confessions, our inmost aspirations,
our most cherished plans, our most sacred ideals are as safe in his
keeping as in our own. Yes, they are safer; for the faithful friend will
not hesitate to prick the bubbles of our conceit; laugh us out of our
sentimentality; expose the root of selfishness beneath our virtuous
pretensions. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." To be sure the
friend must do all this with due delicacy and tact. If he takes
advantage of his position to exercise his censoriousness upon us we
speedily vote him a bore, and take measures to get rid of him. But when
done with gentleness and good nature, and with an eye single to our real
good, this pruning of the tendrils of our inner life is one of the most
precious offices of friendship.

THE REWARD.

+The chief blessing of friendship is the sense that we are not living
our lives and fighting our battles alone; but that our lives are linked
with the lives of others, and that the joys and sorrows of our united
lives are felt by hearts that beat as one.+--The seer who laid down so
severely the stern conditions which the highest friendship must fulfill,
has also sung its praises so sweetly, that his poem at the beginning of
his essay may serve as our description of the blessings which it is in
the power of friendship to confer:

A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And, after many a year,
Glowed unexhausted kindliness
Like daily sunrise there.
My careful heart was free again,--
Oh, friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched,
Through thee the rose is red,
All things through thee take nobler form
And look beyond the earth,
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path in thy worth.
Me too thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair.

THE TEMPTATION.

+A relation so intimate as that of friendship offers constant
opportunity for betrayal.+--Friends understand each other perfectly.
Friend utters to friend many things which he would not for all the world
let others know. And more than that, the intimate asso