e in things known, tried,
understood; a comfort and a peacefulness, often truly Elysian, in
finding one's self again in this quiet, crepuscular, downy world of old
friendships--a world, as I have remarked, largely peopled with ghosts,
our own and other folks'; but ghosts whose footsteps never creak, whose
touch can never startle, or whose voice stab us, and who smile a smile
which has the wide, hazy warmth of setting suns or veiled October skies.
Yes, whatever they may lack (through our own fault and folly), old
friendships are made up of what, when all is said and done, we need
above every other thing, poor faulty, uncertain creatures that we are--I
mean kindness and certain indulgence. There is more understanding in new
friendships, and a closer contact of soul with soul; but that contact
may mean a jar, a bruise, or, worst of all, a sudden sense of icy chill;
and the penetrating comprehension may entail, at any moment, pained
surprise and disappointment. Making new friends is not merely
exploration, but conquest; and what cruel checks to our wishes and
ambitions!

Instead of which, all vanity long since put to sleep, curiosity extinct
for years, insidious pleasures of self-explanation quite forgotten,
there remains this massive comfort of well-known faithful and trusting
kindness; a feeling of absolute reassurance almost transcending the
human, such as we get from, let us say, an excellent climate.

There remain, also, joys quite especial to old friendship, or the
possibility thereof, for the reality, alas! is rare enough. The sudden
discovery, for instance, after a period of separation or a gap in
intercourse, of qualities and ways not previously seen (perhaps not
previously wanted) in the well-known soul: new notes, but with the added
charm of likeness to already loved ones, deeper, more resonant, or
perhaps of unsuspected high unearthly purity, in the dear voice. Absence
may do it, or change of occupation; or sudden vicissitude of fortune; or
merely the reading of a certain book (how many friends may not Tolstoi's
"Resurrection" have thus revealed to one another!), or the passing of
some public crisis like the Dreyfus business. What! after these years of
familiarity, we did not know each other fully? You thought, you felt,
like that on such or such a subject, dear old friend, and I never
suspected it! Nay, never knew, perhaps, that _I_ must feel and think
like that, and in no other way! To find more in what one a