If two travellers would go their way harmoniously together, the one must take as true and just a view of things as the other, else their path will not be strewn with roses.  Yet you can travel profitably and pleasantly even with a blind man, if he practises common courtesy, and when you converse about the scenery will remember that he is blind but that you can see; and you will not forget that his sense of hearing is probably quickened by his want of sight.  Otherwise you will not long keep company.  A blind man, and a man in whose eyes there was no defect, were walking together, when they came to the edge of a precipice.  “Take care! my friend,” said the latter, “here is a steep precipice; go no farther this way.”—­“I know better,” said the other, and stepped off.

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend.  We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered.  There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.  The constitutional differences which always exist, and are obstacles to a perfect Friendship, are forever a forbidden theme to the lips of Friends.  They advise by their whole behavior.  Nothing can reconcile them but love.  They are fatally late when they undertake to explain and treat with one another like foes.  Who will take an apology for a Friend?  They must apologize like dew and frost, which are off again with the sun, and which all men know in their hearts to be beneficent.  The necessity itself for explanation,—­what explanation will atone for that?

True love does not quarrel for slight reasons, such mistakes as mutual acquaintances can explain away, but, alas, however slight the apparent cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, which can never be set aside.  Its quarrel, if there is any, is ever recurring, notwithstanding the beams of affection which invariably come to gild its tears; as the rainbow, however beautiful and unerring a sign, does not promise fair weather forever, but only for a season.  I have known two or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never known advice to be of use but in trivial and transient matters.  One may know what another does not, but the utmost kindness cannot impart what is requisite to make the advice useful.  We must accept or refuse one another as we are.  I could tame a hyena more easily than my Friend.  He is a material which no tool of mine will work.  A naked savage will fell an oak with a firebrand, and wear a hatchet out of a rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest chip out of the character of my Friend, either to beautify or deform it.

The lover learns at last that there is no person quite transparent and trustworthy, but every one has a devil in him that is capable of any crime in the long run.  Yet, as an Oriental philosopher has said, “Although Friendship between good men is interrupted, their principles remain unaltered.  The stalk of the lotus may be broken, and the fibres remain connected.”