Pipefuls | Page 3

until you get ready to.
Emerson is right in saying that friendship can't be hurried. It takes time
to ripen. It needs a background of humorous, wearisome, or even tragic
events shared together, a certain tract of memories shared in common,
so that you know that your own life and your companion's have really
moved for some time in the same channel. It needs interchange of
books, meals together, discussion of one another's whims with mutual
friends, to gain a proper perspective. It is set in a rich haze of
half-remembered occasions, sudden glimpses, ludicrous pranks,
unsuspected observations, midnight confidences when heart spoke to
candid heart.
[Illustration]
The soul preaches humility to itself when it realizes, startled, that it has
won a new friend. Knowing what a posset of contradictions we all are,
it feels a symptom of shame at the thought that our friend knows all our
frailties and yet thinks us worth affection. We all have cause to be
shamefast indeed; for whereas we love ourselves in spite of our faults,
our friends often love us even on account of our faults, the highest level
to which attachment can go. And what an infinite appeal there is in
their faces! How we grow to cherish those curious little fleshy

cages--so oddly sculptured--which inclose the spirit within. To see
those faces, bent unconsciously over their tasks--each different, each
unique, each so richly and queerly expressive of the lively and perverse
enigma of man, is a full education in human tolerance. Privately, one
studies his own ill-modeled visnomy to see if by any chance it bespeaks
the emotions he inwardly feels. We know--as Hamlet did--the vicious
mole of nature in us, the o'ergrowth of some complexion that mars the
purity of our secret resolutions. Yet--our friends have passed it over,
have shown their willingness to take us as we are. Can we do less than
hope to deserve their generous tenderness, granted before it was
earned?
The problem of education, said R. L. S., is two-fold--"first to know,
then to utter." Every man knows what friendship means, but few can
utter that complete frankness of communion, based upon full
comprehension of mutual weakness, enlivened by a happy
understanding of honourable intentions generously shared. When we
first met our friends we met with bandaged eyes. We did not know
what journeys they had been on, what winding roads their spirits had
travelled, what ingenious shifts they had devised to circumvent the
walls and barriers of the world. We know these now, for some of them
they have told us; others we have guessed. We have watched them
when they little dreamed it; just as they (we suppose) have done with
us. Every gesture and method of their daily movement have become
part of our enjoyment of life. Not until a time comes for saying
good-bye will we ever know how much we would like to have said. At
those times one has to fall back on shrewder tongues. You remember
Hilaire Belloc:
From quiet homes and first beginning Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning But laughter, and the love of
friends.

THOUGHTS ON CIDER
[Illustration]

Our friend Dove Dulcet, the poet, came into our kennel and found us
arm in arm with a deep demijohn of Chester County cider. We poured
him out a beaker of the cloudy amber juice. It was just in prime
condition, sharpened with a blithe tingle, beaded with a pleasing bubble
of froth. Dove looked upon it with a kindled eye. His arm raised the
tumbler in a manner that showed this gesture to be one that he had
compassed before. The orchard nectar began to sluice down his throat.
Dove is one who has faced many and grievous woes. His Celtic soul
peers from behind cloudy curtains of alarm. Old unhappy far-off things
and battles long ago fume in the smoke of his pipe. His girded spirit
sees agrarian unrest in the daffodil and industrial riot in a tin of
preserved prunes. He sees the world moving on the brink of horror and
despair. Sweet dalliance with a baked bloater on a restaurant platter
moves him to grief over the hard lot of the Newfoundland fishing fleet.
Six cups of tea warm him to anguish over the peonage of Sir Thomas
Lipton's coolies in Ceylon. Souls in perplexity cluster round him like
Canadian dimes in a cash register in Plattsburgh, N. Y. He is a human
sympathy trust. When we are on our deathbed we shall send for him.
The perfection of his gentle sorrow will send us roaring out into the
dark, and will set a valuable example to the members of our family.
But it is the rack of clouds that makes the sunset lovely. The bosomy
vapours