Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
She.—And what recalled the poem?
He.—I was thinking of the people whom we meet, and who "speak us in the passing." People whom we may never meet again, but whom we never can forget.
She.—That intangible something which makes us wish to become more closely associated with our newly-made acquaintance,—what is it? It is indefinable. We meet some one at the theater, at the club, at the social function, and there lingers with us for many days, the remembrance of the few brief moments in which we felt that we were as "twin spirits moving musically to a lute's well ordered law." Strange as it may seem, we live in a world of people,—people to the right of us, people to the left of us, everywhere about us, and only here and there a kindred spirit in whose moral and mental atmosphere we bask as in the rays of sunshine. This something that makes us feel that only the element of time is needed to make of our newly-formed acquaintance a friend that shall last through life,—what is it? A warm hand clasp, a friendly word, and in one brief moment that mysterious something that clouds the soul, is thrown aside, and in our sky a new star appears as fixed as Polaris in the heavens.
When we have an experience of this kind, although we may have interchanged but few words with our new friend, we feel intuitively that we could spend many hours together and that we should never tire of exchanging ideas.
He.—Yes; but does this not presuppose a mind stored with those "treasured thoughts" about which we were speaking in our last conversation?
She.—Possibly, in a sense; but first of all, it presupposes harmony of taste, of feeling, of ideas. This does not mean, of course, that each shall agree with the other in all essentials, but that each shall have the same broad and intelligent way of looking at a subject, and a consideration each for the other's opinions.