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THE GREATER FRIENDSHIP

I WONDER Whether I can tell the story of a wonderful friendship which has been mine, and which lies, like the scenery of the stage, unchanged, behind the busy activities and entrances and exits of the actors. It has been like the sky, which is always there, no matter what scenes have been enacted below. It has been like my own identity-something which is the same, whether my years were few or many. I can hardly tell when it began, but it must have been when I was very young that I first became aware of this friendship-not that I called it or could have called it friendship, for I was too young to know what friendship meant; but nevertheless early, very early, the feeling of a comradeship to which I might turn came to me.

One of the tests of friendship is the power to withdraw one's presence at fitting times: to be sensitive to the inopportune moments of life. Herein this friend showed his true friendliness: he was never intrusive. He never spoke of his friendship: he was never eager or forward to assert it he never put forward absurd or impossible claims upon my attention or my regard: he was dexterously selfeffacing.

Can I ever tell the story of this marvel-working friendship? There are associations with our fellow-men which we sometimes out of politeness speak of as friendships

-saying with an odd carelessness, "Oh yes, he is an old friend of mine." There are other comradeships more close and intimate, allowing of confidences in hours. of perplexity, when long experience tells us we can trust the companion tried through many years. And yet, and yet, is there in these friendships no neutral ground-a territory which your friend can never enter? There are rooms in the soul to which such friends are strangers. Is it not so ?

But, therefore, all the more I wonder whether I can tell the tale of a friendship which passed beyond all these, and which crowned my life with a comradeship which grew into a friendship and which surpassed all the intimacies of other companionships. As I contemplate it now with seventy-five years of life behind me, I am filled with wonder at the way this friendship grew. I did not seek it. I might say that it was thrust upon me, but that word would contradict the reticence, the delicate reserve, which marked this friendship.

"Thine own friend and thy father's friend, forsake not," wrote the wise man of the East, and as I look back upon this friendship which so gently and gradually disclosed itself to me, I feel that though it was always personal to me, yet that it was, at least in spirit, an inherited friendship. It came with a kind of unspoken assurance that it was no new thing, sprung suddenly upon my life: it did not come with one of those violent fascinations which create a fast and furious friendship of a few months, and end in the regret of confidences given and secrets told which had been more wisely withheld. It came as a thing which grew

like an unnoticed bit of rusty green, unrecognized as a flower, developing with subtle and unobserved quietness, so that though not welcomed and made much of, it yet became so much a thing accepted that, had it gone, it would have been missed.

And one feature there was about this friendship: it was not, as I have hinted, intrusive, but it was always there. It was like an unused and unappreciated sea-wall, which never hears its praises sung but which stands steadfast, reaching its protecting arm as a shelter to the ships which are anchored in the harbour.

But this kind of image is too passive: it fails to express the activity, as it were, of this wonderful friendship; for it often brought me unsought help. The silent friend who had joined his life to mine, yet never intruded his friendship, seemed sometimes to move alongside me and say, "You need me now: I am here to help." Looking back, I feel that this was always his tone to me, but as he sweetly left me unembarrassed by his presence, I did not always realize how near and prompt was his help. So for long this friendship was one of watchfulness and readiness for service-a friendship which was ready to give and asked nothing in return.

Who, looking back upon his life, is not often ashamed. to recall how eagerly the friends of the passing hour were welcomed and fêted, while the dear old friend, whose features had grown so familiar that we thought no more of his presence than we did of the clock on the mantelpiece, or the hatstand in the hall, has been left ungreeted, and has taken no offence, but has mingled among the

guests, doing to one and another some little service which we as hosts had omitted.

Friendship! Yes, we often measure it by the gay hours of laughter which we have spent together. The little cosy dinner at some choice restaurant, followed by the two or three hours at the play when we felt drawn towards one another by the physical comfort and pleasant enjoyment of the passing hour. But these things do not fill the requirements of our hearts when we think of friendship. We know other moods than those which smiling hours bring us. What about the hours when we take ourselves to task, and though we would fain shake off the troublesome power within which tells us that we have fallen below ourselves? What friend comes to us in such hours? and what would he say? Do we want some one who bids us give no heed to the voice of self-reproach? O! yes, we often listen to such friends, and we are inclined to accept their oracular sedatives; but when they are gone, and we are again alone, do we not know that we repudiate their counsel ?

Here, again, was the wonder of that friendship. Silent and near at hand, the friend who never intruded upon my privacy, seemed to me to judge of matters concerning which my heart was in debate. He spoke no word, but I knew that he could not speak flattering words, and still less words of untruth. So from his very silence there would come counsel, and I knew that, unlike lighthearted friends, he believed in me, and in the greatness of the future which awaited me, after a fashion which to other friends was impossible.

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