"A friend
Wedded into our life is more to us
Than twice five thousand kinsman one in blood."
Such was the friendship of Ruth and Naomi. Orpha loved Naomi, kissed her, and returned satisfied to her early home; but Ruth cleaved unto her, saying:
"Entreat me not to leave thee,
And to return from following after thee:
For whither thou goest, I will go;
Where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
Thy people shall be my people,
And thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die,
And there will I be buried:
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
If aught but death part thee and me."
The keeping of a friend like the keeping of a fortune, lies in the getting, although in friendship much depends upon circumstances of association. However subtle may be the circumstances which bring friends together, or whatever natural agreement may exist between their natures, still there is always a conscious choosing of friends. In this choosing lies the secret of abiding friendship. Young says:
"First on thy friend deliberate with thyself;
Pause, ponder, sift: not eager in the choice,
Nor jealous of the chosen; fixing fix;
Judge before friendship, then confide till death."
Steadfastness and constancy such as this seldom loses a friend.
Last of all, abiding friendship is grounded in virtue. Says a famed writer on Friendship: "There is a pernicious error in those who think that a free indulgence in all lusts and sins is extended in friendship. Friendship was given us by nature as the handmaid of virtues and not as the companion of our vices. It is virtue, virtue I say... that both wins friendship and preserves it." And closing his remarks on this immortal subject, Cicero causes Laelius to say: "I exhort you to lay the foundations of virtue, without which friendship can not exist, in such a manner, that with this one exception, you may consider that nothing in the world is more excellent than friendship."
IX. TRAVEL. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
We have set in order some facts, incidents, and lessons gathered from a hasty trip to the old country during the summer of 1899. The journey was made in company with Rev. C.F. Juvinall, for four years my room-mate and fellow-student, and my estimable friend. On Wednesday, June 21st, we sailed from Boston Harbor; reached Liverpool, England, Saturday morning the 1st of July; visited this second town in the British kingdom; stopped over at the old town of Chester; took a run out to Hawarden Estate, the home of Gladstone; changed cars at Stratford-on-Avon and visited the tomb of Shakespeare; staid a half day and a night in the old university town of Oxford, and reached London on the evening of July 4th. Having spent a week in London, we crossed the English Channel to Paris; remained there two days, then made brief visits to the battlefield of Waterloo, to Brussels, Amsterdam, Hull, Sheffield, Dublin, and back to Liverpool. We sailed to Boston and returned to Chicago by way of Montreal and Detroit, having spent forty-nine days—the intensest and delightfullest of our lives. At first, we hesitated to treat this subject from a point of view of personal experience, but since it is our purpose to incite in others the love for and the right us of all helpful resources of happiness and power, it seemed to us that we could no better accomplish our purpose with respect to this subject than to recount our own observations from this one limited, imperfect journey.