Then there are some who let go the hand of a friend because they feel sure of him, to grasp the extended hand of a former enemy.  Politicians, especially, do this.  An enemy can not so easily be transformed into a friend.  As in those paintings of George iii., on tavern-signs, after the Revolution changed to George Washington, there will still be the same old features....  The opposite of this is what every generous nature has tried.  To revive a dying friendship, this is impossible.  If you find yourself losing your friendship for a person, there must be some reason for it.  If the former dear name is becoming indistinct on the tablet of your heart, the attempt to re-write it will entirely obliterate it.  It is said that a sure way to obliterate any writing, is to attempt to re-write it....  But it is not true that ‘hot love soon cools.’  With all my faults—­and to say that I am an O’Molly is to admit that I have faults, and I am not sure that I would wish to be without them.  To speak paradoxically, a fault in some cases does better than a virtue—­as on some organs ’the wrong note in certain passages has a better effect than the right.’  But, as I was saying, with all my faults, I have never yet changed toward a friend; I will not admit even to the ante-chamber of my heart a single thought untrue to my friend.  Though it is true my friends are so few that I could more than count them on my fingers, had I but one hand....  And these few friends—­what shall I say of them?  They have become so a part of my constant thoughts and feelings, so a part of myself, that I can not project them—­if I may so speak—­from my own interior self, so as to portray them.  Have you not such friends?  Are there none whom to love has become so a habit of your life that you are almost unconscious of it—­that you hardly think of it, any more than you think—­’I breathe’?

There is probably no one who has not some time in his or her life felt the dreariness of fancied friendliness.  I can recall in my own experience at least one time when this dreary feeling came over me.  It was during a twilight walk home from a visit.  I can convey to you no idea of the utter loneliness of the unloved feeling; it seemed that not even the love of God was mine, or if it was, there was not individuality enough in it; it was so diffused; this one, whom I disliked—­that insignificant person, might share in it.  I know not how long I indulged in these thoughts, with my eyes on the ground, or seeing all things ’as though I saw them not,’ but when I did raise them to take cognizance of any thing, there was, a few degrees above the horizon, the evening star; it shone as entirely on me as though it shone on me exclusively.  It is thus, I thought, with His love; thus it melts into each individual soul.  Such gentle thoughts as these, long after the star had sunk behind the western mountains, were a calm light in my soul.  And I awoke the next morning, the old cheerful