He was not insensible to this, though he passed it over without much answer. He showed me a letter from his second son, very affectionate and natural. I congratulated him, most sincerely, on his approaching happiness in collecting them all together. “Yes,” he answered, “my group will increase, like a snow-ball, as I roll along, and they will soon all four be as happy as four little things know how to be.”
This drew him on into some reflections upon affection and upon happiness. “There is no happiness,” he said, “without participation; no participation without affection. There is, indeed, in affection a charm that leaves all things behind it, and renders even every calamity that does not interfere with it inconsequential and there is no difficulty, no toil, no labour, no exertion, that will not be endured where there is a view of reaping it.”
He ruminated some time, and then told me of a sermon he had heard preached some months ago, sensibly demonstrating the total vanity and insufficiency, even for this world, of all our best affections, and proving their fallibility from our most infirm humanity.
My concurrence did not here continue: I cannot hold this doctrine to be right, and I am most sure it is not desirable. Our best affections, I must and do believe, were given us for the best purposes, for every stimulation to good, and every solace in evil.
But this was not a time for argument. I said nothing, while he, melancholy and moralizing, continued in this style as long as he could venture to stay. He then rose and took his hat, saying, “Well, so much for the day; what may come to-morrow I know not; but, be it what it may, I stand prepared.”
I hoped, I told him, that his little snowball would be all he could wish it, and I was heartily glad he would so soon collect it.
“We will say,” cried he, “nothing of any regrets,” and bowed, and was hastening off.
The “we,” however, had an openness and simplicity that drew from me an equally open and simple reply. “No,” I cried, “but I will say-for that you will have pleasure in hearing that you have lightened my time here in a manner that no one else could have done, of this party.”
To be sure this was rather a circumscribed compliment, those he left considered—but it was strict and exact truth, and therefore like his own dealing. He said not a word of answer, but bowed, and went away, leaving me firmly impressed with a belief that I shall find in him a true, an honourable, and even an affectionate friend, for life.