• Author: The Castle
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
• Page Number:
• Date: 1 12 1916
• Tags:
• advice
• friendship
• charity

FRIENDSHIP In looking over the well edited columns of The Castle we found the following article which is well worthy pursuing. Friendship is the very beginning of happiness in the heart. It is a rare and gracious plant, and is found in its purity and power, only here and there among the hosts of men and women who dot the earth's surface by their moving forms and their faces. Friendship is not love, but in a certain sense it is something finer and more divine. It does not coexist with passion in any form, while love always contains more or less of the passion element. Friendship is never purely selfish, as love frequently is, although a measure of selfishness, perhaps, is inseparable from all things human. But the nearest thing to the loves and joys of the angels above, is the earthly friendship of two human spirits. As the years pass, and experience proves betrayal and falseness, encountered oftener than sincerity and loyalty, the following passage from Lord Macaulay becomes poignant in its personal application, "The more I see of the world, and the wider my acquaintance becomes, the and more narrower exclusive my affections grow. There are not ten persons in the world whose deaths would spoil my dinner, but there are one or two whose deaths would break my heart.' How rare is the lofty and just mind, which nothing can influence, which believes not, though evidence points irrefutably, but which trusts in the integrity of the spirit, even though actions do not conform with the pristine promise! Such friendship is an oasis in the desert of lost illusions, and banished hopes, when dreams have been followed by reality, and all that the heart desired and followed after, during the years, has vanished in the mist, and left no trace. The echo of Portia's plea to the Venetian Tribunal, comes through the centuries as the strains of the softest music, pleading, imploring—"The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven." Charity and mercy are one and inseparable. They temper the exuberance and buoyancy of youth, glorify old age—together they strew flowers over life's long road, 'till after night, day breaks, and the tiring vision beholds "face to face" what before it has but seen darkly through a glass.