Giving

a letter, and from him I receive a letter. That seems to you a little. Me it suffices. It is a spiritual gift worthy of him to give and of me to receive. It profanes nobody. In these warm lines the heart will trust itself, as it will not to the tongue, and pour out the prophecy of a godlier existence that all the annals of heroism have yet made good.

Н

Friendship.

HE is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence, I think, is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are

at a level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his.

I say to him, ‘How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine?' which belief of mine this gift seems to deny. Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful, things for gifts. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the Buddhist who never thanks, and who says, 'Do not flatter your benefactors.'

THE

Gifts.

HE reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is no commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish compared with the service he

Receiving

Expression

Inspiration of Friendship

knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that goodwill I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. Gifts.

IT

+

T is very certain that sincere and happy conversation doubles our powers; that in the effort to unfold the thought to a friend we make it clearer to ourselves, and surround it with illustrations that help and delight us. It may happen that each hears from the other a better wisdom than anyone else will ever hear from either.

HE soul of a man must be the servant of another. The true friend must

THE soul have

an attraction to whatever virtue is in us. Our chief want in life, is it not somebody who can make us do what we can? And we are easily great with the loved and honoured associate. We come out of our eggshell existence and

see the great dome arching over us; see the zenith above and the nadir under us.

SPEE

Social Aims.

PEECH is power; speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense. You are to be missionary and carrier of all that is good and noble. Virtues speak to virtues, vices to vices, each to their own kind in the people with whom we deal. Social Aims.

NATURE steadily aims to protect each against every other. Each is self-de

fended. Nothing is more marked than the power by which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a world where every benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor, only by continuation of his activity into places where it is not due; where children seem so much at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men are too social and interfering. We rightly speak of the guardian angels of children. How superior in their security.

Speech

Selfprotection

Outside

Influ

ences

mercy

from infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity
and second thought! They shed their own
abundant beauty on the objects they behold.
Therefore, they are not at the
of such
poor educators as we adults. If we huff and
chide them, they soon come not to mind it,
and get a self-reliance; and if we indulge them
to folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere.

WE

E need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no office thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism: the devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. Be another: not thyself, but a Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a poet, but a Shaksperian. In vain, the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, cr of love itself, hold thee there. On, and forever onward!