All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist, the statesman, the housekeeper, are unconsciously amended in the intercourse of friends.

It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,
A happy and auspicious bird of calm
Which rides o'er life's ever-tumultuous ocean;
A God that broods o'er chaos in commotion;
A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,
Lifts its bold head into the world's frore air,
And blooms most radiantly when others die,
Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;
And with the light and odor of its bloom,
Shining within the dungeon and the tomb;
Whose coming is as light and music are
'Mid dissonance and gloom-a star

Which moves not mid the moving heavens alone

A smile amid dark frowns-a gentle tone

Among rude voices, a beloved light,

A solitude, a refuge, a delight.

My treasures are my friends.

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine and a man cannot live without love.

Henry David Thoreau

Percy

Bysshe

Shelley

Constan

tius George P. Upton

But sweeter none than voice of faithful friend;
Sweet always, sweetest heard in loudest storm.
Some I remember, and will ne'er forget.

Robert

Pollok

I count myself in nothing else so happy

Shake

As in a soul remembering my good friends,

speare

A faithful friend is a true image of the Napolecn Deity.

XIV

BENEFITS OF FRIENDSHIP

My friend! my friend! to address thee delights me, there is such clearness in the delivery. I am delivered of my tale, which, being told to strangers, still would linger in my life as if untold, or doubtful how it ran.

Where a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend he may quit the stage.

When care is on me, earth a wilderness,

The evening starless and unsunned the day, When I go clouded like them, sad and grey, My fears grown mighty and my hope grown less; When every lilting tune brings new distress,

Unmirthful sound the children at their play,
Nor any book can charm my thought away
From the deep sense of mine unworthiness;

Then think I on my friends. Such friends have I,
Witty and wise, learnéd, affectionate,

There must be in me something fine and high

To hold such treasures at the hands of fate; Their nobleness hints my nobility,

Their love arrays my soul in robes of state.

He preserved in the day of poverty and distress that consolation of all this world's afflictions,-a friend.

To have a friend, to talk with him, is bliss;
But oh, how blest are friendship's silences!

Life hath no blessing like a prudent friend.

Henry

David
Thoreau

Francis
Bacon

Wallace
Rice, on
"The
Solace of
Friends"

Henry W. Longfellow

Christopher Bannister

Euripides