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man-child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet been cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes?

HE friend coldly turns them over, and

THE

passes from the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes the other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself. Days and nights of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of light, have engraved their shadowy characters on that tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. Is there then no friend?

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know how to put his private fact into literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom

Others
Are Not
De-
ceived

Blind

for Our

Own

Good

Blind for Our Own Good

has other
tongues and ministers than we, that
though we should hold our peace, the truth
would not the less be spoken, might check
injuriously the flames of our zeal. A man
can only speak, so long as he does not feel
his speech to be partial and inadequate.
It is partial, but he does not see it to be so
whilst he utters it. As soon as he is released
from the instinctive and particular, and
sees its partiality, he shuts his mouth in
disgust. For, no man can write any thing,
who does not think that what he writes is
for the time, the history of the world; or
do any thing well, who does not esteem his
work to be of importance. My work may
be of none, but I must not think it of none,
or I shall not do it with impunity.

Nature.

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Y friends have come to me unsought.

M The great God gave them to

me.

By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex, and circumstance, at which he usually connives, and now makes many one. High thanks I owe you, excellent lovers, who carry out the world for me to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all my thoughts. Friendship.

THE

`HERE are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each SO sovereign, that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth. A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put

Friendship Eternal

Truth

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