Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.

     “He that hath love and judgment too,
     Sees more than any other doe.”

It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a saint.  It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man.

And it is well said by another poet,

     “Why love among the virtues is not known,
     Is that love is them all contract in one.”

All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist, the statesman, 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 only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.  Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth, while traders prize a cheap honesty, and neighbors and acquaintance a cheap civility.  In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to rust.  None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us.  Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.  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 that for the mass of men there is any truer and nobler relation possible.  A man may have good neighbors, so called, and acquaintances, 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 practise; and so do the neighborhood and the family.  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 in 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 transcend our earthly life, and anticipate Heaven for us.  What is this Love that may come right into the middle of a prosaic Goffstown day, equal to any of the gods? that discovers a new world, fair