Friendship | Page 9

afraid of giving ourselves
away cheaply--and it is a proper enough feeling, the value of which we
learn through sad experience--but on the whole perhaps the warm
nature, which acts on impulse, is of a higher type, than the
over-cautious nature, ever on the watch lest it commit itself. We can do
nothing with each other, we cannot even do business with each other,
without a certain amount of trust. Much more necessary is it in the
beginning of a deeper intercourse.
And if trust is the first requisite for making a friend, faithfulness is the
first requisite for keeping him. The way to have a friend is to be a
friend. Faithfulness is the fruit of trust. We must be ready to lay hold of
every opportunity which occurs of serving our friend. Life is made up
to most of us of little things, and many a friendship withers through
sheer neglect. Hearts are alienated, because each is waiting for some
great occasion for displaying affection. The great spiritual value of
friendship lies in the opportunities it affords for service, and if these are
neglected it is only to be expected that the gift should be taken from us.
Friendship, which begins with sentiment, will not live and thrive on
sentiment. There must be loyalty, which finds expression in service. It
is not the greatness of the help, or the intrinsic value of the gift, which
gives it its worth, but the evidence it is of love and thoughtfulness.
Attention to detail is the secret of success in every sphere of life, and
little kindnesses, little acts of considerateness, little appreciations, little
confidences, are all that most of us are called on to perform, but they
are all that are needed to keep a friendship sweet. Such thoughtfulness
keeps our sentiment in evidence to both parties. If we never show our

kind feeling, what guarantee has our friend, or even ourself, that it
exists? Faithfulness in deed is the outward result of constancy of soul,
which is the rarest, and the greatest, of virtues. If there has come to us
the miracle of friendship, if there is a soul to which our soul has been
drawn, it is surely worth while being loyal and true. Through the little
occasions for helpfulness, we are training for the great trial, if it should
ever come, when the fabric of friendship will be tested to the very
foundation. The culture of friendship, and its abiding worth, never
found nobler expression than in the beautiful proverb,[3] "A friend
loveth at all times, and is a brother born for adversity."
Most men do not deserve such a gift from heaven. They look upon it as
a convenience, and accept the privilege of love without the
responsibility of it. They even use their friends for their own selfish
purposes, and so never have true friends. Some men shed friends at
every step they rise in the social scale. It is mean and contemptible to
merely use men, so long as they further one's personal interests. But
there is a nemesis on such heartlessness. To such can never come the
ecstasy and comfort of mutual trust. This worldly policy can never truly
succeed. It stands to reason that they cannot have brothers born for
adversity, and cannot count on the joy of the love that loveth at all
times; for they do not possess the quality which secures it. To act on
the worldly policy, to treat a friend as if he might become an enemy, is
of course to be friendless. To sacrifice a tried and trusted friend for any
personal advantage of gain or position, is to deprive our own heart of
the capacity for friendship.
The passion for novelty will sometimes lead a man to act like this.
Some shallow minds are ever afflicted by a craving for new
experiences. They sit very loosely to the past. They are the easy victims
of the untried, and yearn perpetually for novel sensations. In this matter
of friendship they are ready to forsake the old for the new. They are
always finding a swan in every goose they meet. They have their
reward in a widowed heart. Says Shakespeare in his great manner,--
The friends thou hast and their adoption tried Grapple them to thy soul
with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of

each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
The culture of friendship must pass into the consecration of friendship,
if it is to reach its goal. It is a natural evolution. Friendship cannot be
permanent unless it becomes spiritual. There must be fellowship in the
deepest things of the soul, community in the highest thoughts,
sympathy with the best endeavors. We are bartering the priceless boon,
if we are looking on friendship