me measure to our being less frank, less ourselves, in them than in
new ones. Our mutual ways of feeling and seeing are apt to produce a
definite track of intellectual and affective intercourse; and as this
track deepens we find ourselves confined, nay, imprisoned in it, with
little possibility of seeing, and none of escaping, as in some sunken
Devonshire lane; the very ups and downs of the friendship existing, so
to speak, below the level of our real life; disagreements and
reconciliations always on one pattern. With people we have known very
long, we are apt to go thus continually over the same ground, reciting
the same formulae of thought and feeling, imitating the _ego_ of former
years in its relations with a _thou_ quite equally obsolete; the real
personality left waiting outside for the chance stranger. It is so easy!
so safe! We have done it so long! There is an air of piety almost in the
monotony and ceremonial; and then, there are the other's habits of
thought which might be jarred, or feelings we might hurt.... Meanwhile
our sincere, spontaneous reality is idling elsewhere, ready to vagabond
irresponsibly at the beck and call of the passing stranger. And, who
knows? while we are thus refusing to give our poor old friend the
benefit of our genuine, living, changed and changing self, we may
ourselves be losing the charm and profit of his or her renovated and
more efficacious reality.

The retribution sometimes comes in unexpected manner. We find ourselves
neglected for some new-comer, thin of stuff, to-morrow threadbare; _we_,
who are conscious all the time of a newness too well hidden, alas! a
newness utterly unsuspected by our friend, and far surpassing the
newness of the new one! Poetic justice too lamentable to dwell upon.
But short of it, far short, our old friendships, with their safe
traditions and lazy habits, are ever tending to become the intercourse
of friendly ghosts.

Yet even this is well worth having, and after bringing praise to younger
friendships, let me for ever feel, rather than speak (for 'tis too deep
and wide for words) befitting gratitude to old ones. For there is always
something puzzling in the present; unrestful and disquieting in all
novelty; and we require, poor harassed mortals, the past and lots of it;
the safe, the done-for past, a heap of last year's leaves or of dry,
scented hay (which is mere dead grass and dead meadow-flowers) to take
our rest upon. There is a virtue ineffabl