I do not wish to treat friendship daintily but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest thing we know. For how, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of man. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul is the nut itself where of all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, lika a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier if he knows the solemnity of that relation and honors it as a law.
There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that we can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be named first. One is TRUTH. A friend is a person reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may will be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
The other element of friendship is TENDERNESS. We are holder to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle; but we can scarcely believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love, can another be so blessed and we so pure that we can offer him TENDERNESS? When a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune... I much prefer the company of plowboys and tin peddlers to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days and encounter by frivolous display... The end of friendship is a commerce the most strict and holy that can be joined, more strict than any of which we have experienced. It is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death. It is fit for serene days and gracefull gifts and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fore, ship wreck, poverty, and persecution. It keeps company with the sallies of the wit and the trances of religion. We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man's life and embellish it by courage, wisdom, and unity. It should never fall into something usual and settled but should be alert and inventive and add rhyme and reason to was drudgery....
