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“Send a boy to college,” says Emerson, “and his fellows educate him”; and Edward Everett Hale has said that the best part of the education one gets at college is that which his fellow students give him. I have always felt sorry for those unfortunate children whose solitary education is obtained with tutors or governesses rather than in schools with other boys and girls. While not disparaging the influence of the teacher, which I well know from personal experience may be a transforming and vitalizing power in a young life, I yet believe it to be true that the standards of most young people and their ways of looking at life are determined chiefly by the companions and intimate associates of their own age.

During certain periods of development, at any rate, the youth is shaped by the opinions and ideals of the world of his own contemporaries, rather than, as we teachers and parents sometimes fondly imagine, by the ideals imposed upon him from our world. We who have passed beyond that stage can recall how truly we lived and moved and had our being in that world, with its standards which now, perhaps, seem to us somewhat unreal. In matters of dress, speech, and deportment how much less we cared for the opinion of our elders than for the approval of our group or “set” of friends! This period of life may be soon outgrown, but while it lasts there are tremendous forces at work upon the young life, and their potency for good or evil is often underestimated.

Chief among these forces for good is a good friendship. The real meaning of unselfishness has many a time been learned first through a strong friendship. Love is essentially self-forgetful. Only he who has learned to love has learned to live. Nothing more surely calls out the best in one and compels one to do his best than an ennobling friendship. Such friendships, then, should be encouraged and young people should have abundant opportunity for forming them. One of the many advantages a fine school offers over even the best private instruction is the rich opportunity for congenial friendships. Like attracts like, and the finest spirits in the school will be your friends if you have that within you which draws them and can hold them. What you are to be during all the remainder of your life will be determined largely by the friends chosen now, for they will help to give your nature its bent, from which it is not likely to depart. Afterward, looking back, you will not be able to comprehend how life could have been lived at all if you had never met certain persons who have become a part of your very existence.

It is not only in youth that friendship is one of the chief blessings of life. It has been regarded by the choicest spirits of every age as among the best gifts of the gods to men. Open any book of “familiar quotations” and you may read the tributes that have been paid to friendship by the great poets, from Bible times to the present. It has generally been believed, however, that youth is the time when the most transforming and most enduring friendships are made. This is, doubtless, because later in life we are likely to become engrossed with our own affairs, the cares of life press upon us, character becomes fixed, and the outgoing of self demanded in a true friendship becomes increasingly difficult. Yet, though youth is the ideal time for the formation of lasting friendships, the great lack, at this period of life, is a true sense of values. We do not enjoy our friendships to their full because we do not realize their worth.

Youth is wasteful of many things, but perhaps of nothing more than of friendship. Too many people wake up later in life to find that what has been so thoughtlessly thrown away never can be regained. The privilege of having a friend and the privilege of being a friend are among the greatest blessings this world affords. To discover in middle life that the friends of one’s youth have, one by one, fallen away, because one made no effort to keep them, will be a sad awakening.

We all have our own conception of friendship, based upon our own experiences; thus to no two persons does the term mean exactly the same. To some the content of the word grows richer and deeper as life goes on, while with others the reverse is true. The cynic believes there is no such thing as true friendship, yet the cynic once was young and probably not a stranger to the transforming power of friendship. What we are to believe about friendship, then, depends upon our own character and upon the kind of life we live.

It takes ideal people to form an ideal friendship; therefore there are not many such friendships. Erring human beings that we are, we carry our frailties into every relation of life. “I am of opinion,” says Cicero, “that except among the virtuous, friendship cannot exist.” Have you a real friend? While it is true that the friendship between you may not be an ideal one, it is also true that through it you and your friend are both having a rare opportunity to grow toward your ideal and in this way to make your friendship perfect. Would you rid yourself of egregious faults? There are two instead of one to grapple with each fault. Would you march on to the attainment of more splendid virtues? There are two instead of one to struggle and to win the victory.

How to make friends perhaps no one can tell you, since friends are born, not made. We choose our pleasures, our books, our occupations, but we do not choose our friends. We only discover them. The formation of a friendship is an unconscious process and must be so. There can be nothing deliberate and premeditated about it. Why is it that one sees the best in you and another the worst? Why does one understand before you speak while another cannot understand even after you explain? If we could answer these questions we should be able to reduce friendship to a mathematical formula, which no one wishes to do. The mystery of it is one of its charms. One can only say as did Montaigne about his friend, “If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him I can only answer, because it was he, because it was I.” Some people attract us by a certain intuition of character. If the intuition be true and if there be adaptability and community of interests, a foundation exists for a close and enduring friendship.

The basis for friendship is personality. You have nothing to give your friend but yourself. You should, therefore, make heavy demands upon yourself. Can you offer your friend anything less than a constantly enriching life? Good intentions are not enough; there must be performance. You have probably asked yourself many times whether you deserve this high friendship. Perhaps you do not. Then resolve that you sometime will deserve it. You are interesting to your friend now. What can you do that you may be more so to-morrow?

Those who lack the power of making friends—and there are unfortunately many such—have one of two failings, or both. Often they are not sincere. The insincere person cannot be a true friend and may not have a true friend. We demand that our friends shall “ring true.” A much more common fault than insincerity is selfishness. One may be not positively and actively selfish but self-centered. The self-centered person does not know how to enter sympathetically into the feelings of others. Such persons should earnestly strive to share the joys and sorrows of those about them and to make the experiences of others their own. Sometimes we say of a person, “He has a genius for making friends.” Such persons have in an eminent degree the capacity for carrying close to their hearts the interests of others. Remember that unless you really care about the concerns and the welfare of others, there is no possible way to make them believe you do.

It is worth while to cultivate the art of making friends, or, rather, it is worth while to put forth every effort to make one’s self worthy of having friends. He who said that a friend “doubles our joys and halves our sorrows” might have expressed it even more strongly. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes understood this when he wrote, “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him.”

You owe your friend, first of all, integrity of character and sincerity in all your dealings. With your friend you can be yourself, your real self. Any pretense, any deceit, any concealment of vital things will create a barrier that nothing can ever break down. You may or you may not admit your friend to the inmost recesses of your heart, but so far as you do admit her, there must be straightforward honesty. Integrity includes not only our dealings with our friends, it affects all our relations with others. The oft-quoted couplet from Lovelace expresses a truth which it behooves every one to take to heart who would be or would have a friend:—

“I could not love thee, dear, so much

Loved I not honour more.”

No real friendship can exist without loyalty on both sides. It is the place of a friend to look after the interests of her friend as if they were her own. Much inspiration may be gained from studying the great friendships of history, such as that of David and Jonathan, of Ruth and Naomi, or of Tennyson and Hallam. Does your friendship in comparison with any one of these seem insignificant, even puerile? Then use the greatest friendship of which you know as a touchstone by which to test your own. For a real friend to speak an unkind word about an absent friend is unthinkable. To envy her, or to desire precedence over her in any way, is proof that your love for her is not real, but only assumed. How far should loyalty go? We all remember the answer of Christ when asked, “How often should I forgive my brother, until seven times?” His answer, until “seventy times seven,” means, as we all know, that there should be no limit to one’s forgiveness. In the same way, there should be no limit to your loyalty to your friend. It should be bounded only by her need and your power.

Of course, there should be community of interests and mutual trust and self-revelation. You have friends whom you admit only to the outer citadel of your heart. Some are “good company” and you love to share your pleasures with them, but in your serious moments you turn away from them. Others share your work, or some special interest in your life. But with your real friend you share the deepest things of your existence. She understands you in your highest moments, she respects your ideals and shares them, she comprehends the fundamental purpose of your life. Only friends who can share each other’s best selves know the highest friendship.

I have said that there must be mutual self-revelation. Never make the mistake of urging the confidence of your friend. Do not force any doors. If you have not the key that unlocks her heart, try to find it by making yourself worthy. Self-giving must be voluntary or it is in vain. We elicit from others only that which we have the power to make our own. Mutual trust would forever banish all petty jealousy. Your friend is not accountable to you for all her doings, and for you to act as if she were will only estrange her from you. Life is too rich in opportunity for her to be limited by any one relationship. If your friend’s life is to expand, her claims upon others and theirs upon her must be recognized.

If your friendship is a worthy one, you are constantly gaining in patience, in courtesy, and in self-control, for love is the greatest of all teachers. Do you promptly check each impatient word that springs to your lips? Do you show the friend who so easily overlooks your faults the same fine courtesy that you show to the stranger who would not overlook them? What a strange idea we sometimes have that love gives us the privilege of rudeness! Your friend may love you in spite of an occasional fit of ill-temper, but no one ever loved another better for it. To be exacting, domineering, or selfish may not drive your friend completely away from you, but it will not strengthen the tie that binds your hearts together.

There should be a certain equality between friends. I do not mean that love is not able easily to bridge over many kinds of inequalities, as that of a difference in station in life or in age, or even in education. I mean that a friendship is harmful when one of the friends is a parasite, receiving everything and contributing nothing. Self-respect demands that each shall give as well as receive.

In his essay on “Friendship,” Emerson says no truer word than this: “Your friend is he who makes you do what you can.” One must not be a fault-finder or a thorn in the flesh of one’s friends, yet friendship has no more sacred duty than to point out faults by showing the better way. “He who truly loves is irreconcilable to faults in one whom he loves; they blur the vision which always lies in his soul.”

On the other hand, it is especially the office of a friend to recognize the excellencies of his friend. “Your friend is he who tells you of your virtues and who insists upon them most when you are most inclined to doubt their existence.” Who of us is not at times sorely in need of this kindly office of a friend? In our moments of discouragement, when faith in self is at a low ebb, the true friend comes to us and by his faith in us restores the balance of life. And what a comfort then is that belief in us and in our powers and possibilities! Friends who do not perform this office, each for the other, as often as the opportunity arises, have missed much of the blessedness of true friendship!

Those who love know that love is not blind. Love has the truest sight. If you want to know what a person really is, do not ask one who hates him, but one who loves him. Yet love may blind itself. To shut your eyes to the faults of your friend is not the way to lessen those faults. To stand between her and the penalty which her deeds have justly brought upon her is to deprive her of one of the most important means of growth. If your affection is of a poor and narrow sort, you will constantly urge your friend to consult her own pleasure and interests in preference to those of others, in this way stifling in her every altruistic impulse. Acting and reacting upon each other in this way you will find that generous feeling and disinterested affection in both of you will constantly diminish. Any two people who love each other should cherish, each in the other, the spirit of self-forgetful service.

A friendship, like everything else in life, is known by its fruits. “Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs from thistles.” The fruits of a worthy friendship are higher and ever higher ideals of life and duty. If your friendship has made you less sensitive to other obligations and less responsive to the call of duty, beware of it! If your love for one has lessened your affection for your other friends, it is not a good friendship. Friendship should expand the heart, not contract it. Everything savoring of narrowness and exclusiveness is a hindrance. You must love your friend so much that you love the whole world better because of her. You must respect and reverence her so truly that all human nature is dignified and ennobled through her.

“All things through thee take nobler form

And look beyond the earth;

The mill-round of our fate appears

A sun-path in thy worth.”

What is the place of the emotional element in friendship? Not the chief place, it may be confidently asserted. In the richest and most enduring friendships, other things are of more importance. Not that there is an absence of emotion—far from it. The danger, however, of over-emphasizing emotion is that the friendship may descend to mere sentimentality. What is more important than emotion in friendship, do you ask? The unity of spirit that gradually takes place in a fine friendship; the feeling that each is perfectly understood by the other; and the knowledge that each can depend upon the other’s loyalty in any and every emergency of life.

It usually takes years to learn how to be a true friend and often some hard experiences are necessary to teach us to appreciate our friends. Sometimes we look back upon the wasted years, and, thinking how rich and happy they might have been, we cry out, “If I had only known!” And sometimes, alas! our friends have to be taken from us ere we learn their worth. Then, as we sit alone with our thoughts, with what a heartache do we remember our every failure to measure up to the stature of the perfect friend!

If you would be a true friend and if you would appreciate your friends now, without waiting for costly lessons, ask yourself some searching questions. Do you care more about what you can get out of your friendship or about what you can put into it? Do you think more about being served or about serving? Do you wonder whether your friend loves you enough or whether you cannot love her more? Do you never imagine yourself slighted or neglected or misunderstood? If you can answer these questions as they ought to be answered, you are on the way to a perfect friendship. Phillips Brooks, who was famous for his friendships, wrote, “Surely there is no more beautiful sight to see in all this world than the growth of two friends’ natures, who, as they grow old together, are always fathoming with newer needs deeper depths of each other’s life and opening richer views of one another’s helpfulness.”

Does friendship cost anything? Yes. All the best things in the world cost something and only they can have them who are willing to pay the price. In its highest and most enduring form friendship belongs, as I have said, only to the highest and finest natures. So much does it cost that no others will—perhaps no others can—pay the price. What is the price? That is the point—one never knows the cost in advance. Whatever the price, however, the true friend is ready to pay it. No sacrifice is too great to make for a real friend.

Yet, sad to say, many a friendship makes shipwreck even though no heroic, sublimely self-sacrificing deeds were demanded of either of the parties to it. The things that would have kept it alive were so little, so easy, but they were too much! After your school days are over and you and your friend have gone your separate ways, it will take time to write those weekly letters. Will your friendship be worth enough to you to pay that price? And by and by, when new interests have come into your life, it will be even less easy to perform those offices of friendship which must not be neglected if friends are to continue to have any share in each other’s lives. To keep up the pretty customs of old—to send the birthday gift, the Christmas remembrance, the occasional message of warm and unchanging love—all these things take time in such a busy world! And so “the little rift within the lute” appears, which, ever widening, will slowly silence all. It is not a cheerful story, but it is the history of many a friendship which had believed itself eternal. Some of our early friendships we outgrow, and it is best that we should. It is part of “putting away childish things.” But if we realized what we were doing, it is inconceivable that we should ever depart so far from the dreams of our youth as to let any true friendship go.

Unless you are very watchful and loving, then, the old friends will, one by one, drop out of your life and make no sign. I beg that you will see to it that there is at least a handful of them left. They should be the real ones, who genuinely loved you and always will. “Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” Never let them go. Let no changing tides of fortune sweep them from you. Be very patient with them as you expect them to be with you. Make allowances for the innumerable appearances of neglect, saying to yourself that they are only appearances. Friends who bear and forbear with each other in this way will find that the friendship grows deeper and stronger with each succeeding year.

If you really want to be such a friend as I have described, I can think of nothing that will help you more than to read over often the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, that matchless chapter on love, and to try to make your affection as near as possible like that which he describes. Nowhere else, in the Bible or out of it, have we so clear, so true, so moving a description of love. Just to read it over brings a glow to the heart and a kindlier feeling toward the whole human race. Let the love that you give to your friends be the love that suffereth long and is kind; that envieth not, that seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked; that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; above all, that never faileth.