"Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightening in past summers.
Fair and flitting like a summer cloud;---there is always some vapor in the air, no matter how long the drought; there are even April Showers. Surely from time to time, for its vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere. It takes place, like vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a law, but always without permananet form, though ancient and familiar as the sun and monn, as sure to come again. The heart is forever inexperienced. They silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never quite deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy clouds in the clmest and clearest days. The Friend is some fair floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be encountered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, [modern day pirates] ere he may sail before the constant trades. But who would not sail through mutiny and storm even over Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of some continet of man?
No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, and indeed no thought is more familiar to their aspirations. All men are dreaming of it, and its drama, which is always a tradegy, is enacted daily. It is the secret of the universe. You may tread the town, you may wonder the country, and none shall ever speak of it, yet thought it is eveywhere busy about it, and the idea is possible in this respect affects our behavior towards all new men and women, and a great many old ones....
All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist, the stateman, and the housekeeper, are unconsciously amended in the intercourse of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. It takes two to speak the truth,---one to speak, and another to hear.
How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and stone? If we dealt with only the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculites are dormant and suffer rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. We ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not even hear this prayer.... He says practically,---I will be content if you treat me as no better than I should be, as deceitful, mean, dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we are contented so to deal and to be dealt with, and we do not think for the mass of men there is any truer and nobler relations possible. A man may have good neighbors, so called, and acquantances, and even companions, wife, parents, brothers, sisters, children, who meet himself and one another on this ground only. ...
....The State does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice; and so do the family and the neighborhood....
....What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues...
But sometimes we are said to love another, that is to stand in a true relation to him, so that we give the best to, and receive the best from, him. Between whom there is hearty truth there is love; and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence to one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages of affection in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which transend our earthly life, and anticipate heaven for us....
What other words, we may ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not dare to repeat them now aloud. We are not competent to hear them at all times."
A week on the Concord and the Merrimac Rivers: Henry Thoreau
