"God divided man into men that they might help each other."- SENECA. "A man that hath friends must show himself friendly." - SOLOMON. "A talent is perfected in solitude; a character in the stream of the world."- GOETHE. แ "Live with wolves, and you will learn to howl.” SPANISH PROVERB. "Although unconscious of the pleasing charm, The mind still bends where friendship points the way; Let virtue then thy partner's bosom warm, Lest vice should lead thy softened soul astray." THEOGNIS, from Xenophon. "Beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls; because to become one with the good, generous and true, is to become in a measure good, generous, and true ourselves."-DR. ARNOLD. II. FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. WITHOUT doubt, home and companions are the chief external influences that determine character. One is almost always good, because it is charged with divine instincts; the other is uncertain in its character, because it springs out of the chances of the world. The main feature of the home is love which "worketh no ill;" hence its natural influence is favorable to good character. Parents for the most part inculcate truth, purity, honesty, and kindness. With abundant allowance for mistake and neglect, the influence of parents and brother and sister is good, but outside of the home there is no such certainty. When John bids father and mother goodby amongst the Berkshire hills, and goes to Boston or New York to make his way in the world, his future depends with almost mathematical certainty upon the character of his associates. He may have good principles and high purposes; tender words of advice are in his ears; his Bible lies next his heart, and love follows him with unceasing prayers; but John will do well or ill as he falls among good or bad companions. Education, ingrafted principles and tastes, remembered love, ambition, conscience, — all these will do much for him, but they will not avail against this later influence. There are many turning-points when the question of success or failure is decided again and again. Life is a campaign, in which a series of fortresses are to be taken; all previous victories and advances may be thrown away by failure in the next. Nearly the last of these is companionship; if one wins the victory here, the reward of a prosperous manhood is within his reach. At the risk of logically inverting my subject, I will speak first of friendship; and I must beg your patience while I put a foundation under my suggestions. If there were but one general truth that I could lodge in the mind of any one or of all men, it would be this: that true life consists in the fulfillment of relations. We are born into relations; we never get out of them; all duty consists in meeting them. The family, the church, the state, humanity at large, these are the sources of our primary and abiding duties, as well as of our happiness, the sum-total of ethics and religion. The relation of friends, though not so sharply defined as that of the family or the state, is as real and as essential to a full life. Emerson says: "Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether." To get this ensphering love into form and expression, is the office of friendship. Bacon goes so far as to say that "a principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness of the heart." He goes on in his noble and wise way to name its other points, and nothing on the subject is better than his threefold statement of its uses: "Peace in the affections, support of the judgment, and bearing a part in all actions and occasions." It is not enough to love only our own family. Love is a great and wide passion, demanding various food and broad fields to range in. When one is only "a family man " he he may have a sound nature, but it will not be a large or generous one; and he |