Part 21

Live with the culpable and you will be apt to die with the criminal. Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty, but, being driven in to the head, it can only be withdrawn by the destruction of the wood. Be you ever so pure-minded yourself you can not associate with bad companions without falling into bad odor. Evil company is like tobacco smoke—you can not be long in its presence without carrying away a taint of it. "Let no man deceive himself," says Petrarch, "by thinking that the contagions of the soul are less than those of the body. They are yet greater; they sink deeper and come on more unsuspectedly." From impure air we take diseases; from bad company, vice and imperfections. Avoid, as far as you can, the company of all vicious persons whatsoever, for no vice is alone, and all are infectious.

Good company not only improves our manners, but also our minds, and intelligent associates will become a source of enjoyment as well as of edification. Good company is that which is composed of intelligent and well-bred persons, whose language is chaste and good, whose sentiments are pure and edifying, whose deportment is such as pure and well-regulated education and correct morals dictate, and whose conduct is directed and restrained by the pure precepts of religion. When we have the advantages of such company it should then be the object of our zeal to imitate their real excellencies, copy their politeness, their carriage, their address, and the easy, well-bred turn of their conversation; but we should remember that, let them shine ever so bright, their vices are so many blemishes upon their character which we should no more think of endeavoring to imitate than we should to make artificial warts upon our faces because some distinguished person happened to have one there by nature.

Water will seek its level. So do the various elements of society. Tell us whom you prefer as companions and we can tell who you are like. Do you love the society of the vulgar? Then you are already debased in your sentiments. Do you seek to be with the profane? In your heart you are like them. Are jesters and buffoons your choice companions? He who loves to laugh at folly is himself a fool. Do you love and seek the society of the wise and good? Is this your habit? Had you rather take the lowest seat among these than the highest seat with others? Then you have already learned to be good. You may not make very rapid progress, but even a good beginning is not to be despised. Hold on your way, and seek to be the companion of those that fear God. So shall you be wise for yourself and wise for eternity.

"There are a thousand nameless ties, Which only such as feel them know, Of kindred thoughts, deep sympathies, And untold fancy spells, which throw O'er ardent minds and faithful hearts A chain whose charmed links so blend That the bright circlet but imparts Its force in these fond words—'My Friend!'"

Friendship is the sweetest and most satisfactory connection in life. It has notable effect upon all states and conditions. It relieves our cares, raises our hopes, and abates our fears. A friend who relates his successes talks himself into a new pleasure, and by opening his misfortunes leaves a part of them behind him. Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by doubling our joys and dividing our griefs. Charity is friendship in common, and friendship is charity inclosed. It is a sweet attraction of the heart towards the merit we esteem or the perfection we admire, and produces a mutual inclination between two or more persons to promote each others' interests, knowledge, virtue, and happiness.

The language of friendship is as varied as the wants and weaknesses of humanity. To the timid and cautious it speaks words of encouragement. To the weak it is ready to extend a helping hand. To the bold and venturesome it whispers words of caution. It is ready to sympathize with the sorrowing one, and to rejoice with those of good cheer. Friendship is not confined to any particular class of society or any particular geographical locality. No surveyed chart, no natural boundary line, no rugged mountain or steep declining vale puts a limit to its growth. Wherever it is watered with the dews of kindness and affection, there you may be sure to find it. Allied in closest companionship with its twin sister, Charity, it enters the abode of sorrow and wretchedness, and causes happiness and peace. Its influence dispels every poisoned thought of envy, and spreads abroad in the mind a contentment which all the powers of the mind could not otherwise bestow. True friendship will bloom only in the soil of a noble and self-sacrificing heart. There it enjoys perpetual Summer, diffusing a sweet atmosphere of love, peace, and joy to all around.

No man can go very far with strength and courage, if he goes alone through the weary struggles of life. We are made to be happier and better by each other's notice and appreciation, and the hearts that are debarred from those influences invariably contract and harden. Here and there we find persons who, from pride or singularity of disposition, affect to be altogether independent of the notice or regard of their fellow-beings; but never yet was there constituted a human heart that did not at some time, in some tender and yearning hour, long for the sympathy of other hearts. Instead of striving to conceal this feeling, it should be regarded as one possessing true nobility. True friendship can only be molded by the experience of time. The attractive face, the winning tongue, or the strong need of some passer-by, is not the permanent test of the union of hearts. We want a more substantial proof than any of these. A thousand transitory friends meet us along the crowded thoroughfares of life; but when we come to try their durability in the sieve of experience, alas, how many fall through! There have been times in the life of every man when he has been willing to stake reputation, credit, all, on the true friendship of some companion; but he turns to find his idol clay, the gold but dross. Few persons are so fortunate as to secure in the course of life the happiness and advantages of one efficient and devoted friend. It is all that many aim at, seek, and ask to have, and is worth a whole caravan of those lukewarm and treacherous souls who, indeed, profess to be attached to us, but whose affection is so uncertain and unstable that we fear to put it to the test of trial lest we lose it forever.

Concerning the one you call your friend, tell us, will he weep with you in your hours of distress? Will he faithfully reprove you to your face for actions for which others are ridiculing and censuring you behind your back? Will he dare to stand forth in your defense when detraction is secretly aiming its weapon at your reputation? Will he acknowledge you with the same cordiality and behave to you with the same friendly attention in the company of your superiors in rank and fortune as when the claims of pride do not interfere with those of friendship? If misfortune and loss should oblige you to retire into a walk of life in which you can not appear with the same liberality as formerly, will he still think himself happy in your society, and instead of withdrawing himself from an unprofitable connection, take pleasure in professing himself your friend, and cheerfully assist you to support the burden of your afflictions? When sickness shall call you to retire from the busy world, will he follow you to your gloomy retreat, listen with attention to your tale of suffering, and administer the balm of consolation to your fainting spirit? And, lastly, when death shall burst asunder every earthly tie, will he shed a tear upon your grave, and lodge the dear remembrance of your mutual friendship in his heart? If so, then grapple him to your heart with hooks of steel; and you shall know the privilege of having one true friend.

Friendship is a vase which, when it is flawed by violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it never can be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious ones never. It is a great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the faults of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains; to bury his weakness in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the housetop. Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only true balance to weigh friends in. True friendship must withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the name, since friendships which are born in adversity are more firm and lasting than those formed in happiness, as iron is more strongly united the fiercer the flames. One has never the least difficulty in finding a devoted friend except when he needs one. Real friends are wont to visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come of their own accord. A friend is not known in prosperity, but can not be hidden in adversity. If we lack the sagacity to discriminate wisely between our acquaintances and our friends, misfortune will readily do it for us. Prosperity gains friends, and adversity tries them. False friends are like our shadows—keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.

The hardest trials of those who fall from affluence to poverty and obscurity is the discovery that the attachment of so many in whom they confided was a pretense, a mask to gain their own ends, or was a miserable shallowness. Sometimes, doubtless, it is with regret that these frivolous followers of the world desert those upon whom they have fawned; but they soon forget them. Flies leave the kitchen when the dishes are empty. The parasites that cluster about the favorites of fortune to gather his gifts and climb by his aid, linger with the sunshine, but scatter at the approach of a storm, as the leaves cling to a tree in Summer weather, but drop off at the breath of Winter. Like ravens settled down for a banquet and suddenly scared away by a noise, how quickly at the first sound of calamity the superficial friends are up and away. Cling to your friends after having chosen them with proper caution. If they reprove you, thank them; if they grieve you, forgive them; if circumstances have torn them from you, circumstances may change and make them yours again. Be very slow to give up an old and tried friend. A true friend is such a rare thing to have that you are blessed beyond the majority of men if you possess but one such. The first law of friendship is sincerity, and he who violates this law will soon find himself destitute of that which he sought.

The death of a friendship is always a tragical affair. Sometimes it cools from day to day, warm confidence gradually giving place to cold civility, and these in turn swiftly becoming icy husks of neglect and repugnance. Sometimes its remembrances touch us with a pang, or we stand at its grave sobbing, wounded with a grief whose balsam never grew. The hardest draught in the cup of life is wrung from betrayed affection, when the guiding light of friendship is quenched in deception, and the gloom that surrounds our path grows palpable. Let one find cold repulse or mocking treachery where he expected the greeting of friendship, and it is not strange that he feels crushed with the discovery.

Old friends! What a multitude of deep and varied emotions are called up from the soul by the utterance of these two words! What thronging memories of other days crowd the brain when they are spoken! Oh, there is magic in their sound, and the spell it evokes is both sad and pleasing. When reverie brings before us in quick succession the scenes of by-gone years, how do the features of olden friends, dim and shadowy as the grave in which many of them are laid, flit before us! How they carry us to other scenes and other places! The thoughts which fill the mind when thus musing on the past are always of a chastened kind. In the scenes of the past we behold a type of the future. The fate of our friends shadows forth our own, and we are indeed dull if we fail to arise from fancied communication with old friends wiser and better men and women.

There are many who find themselves in the toils of an evil custom who would most willingly give money and time to be free from its control. Montaigne says, "Custom is a violent and treacherous school-mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceivedly slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power to lift up our eyes." Custom is the law of one class of people and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash, for precedence is the legislator of the first and novelty of the second. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present; but both are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come. Of the two, fashion imposes the heaviest burdens, for she cheats her votaries of their time, their fortune, and their comforts, and she repays them only with the celebrity of being ridiculed and despised—a very paradoxical mode of payment, yet always most thankfully received.

It is surprising to what an extent our likes and dislikes are creatures of custom. Our modes of belief, thoughts, and opinions are molded and shaped by what has been the prevailing mode of thinking heretofore. Though we are, indeed, not so given to the worship of past institutions as some people, yet we all acknowledge the prevailing power of custom, of personal habits, and of fashions. We dare not stand alone in any matter of concern, but wish to be in company of those similarly minded. The law of opinion goes forth. We do not ask who promulgates it, but fall into the ranks of its followers and worshipers. We are whirled in the giddy ranks and blinded by the dazzling lights. Novelty is the show, conformity is the law—and life a trance, until at last we awake from it to find that we have been the victims of a fatal folly and a bewildering dream.

Habit is man's best friend or worst enemy. It can exalt him to the highest pinnacle of virtue, honor, or happiness, or sink him to the lowest depths of vice, shame, and misery. If we look back upon the usual course of our feelings we shall find that we are more influenced by the frequent recurrence of objects than by their weight and importance, and that habit has more force in forming our character than our opinions. The mind naturally takes its tone and complexion from what it habitually contemplates. "Whatever may be the cause," says Lord Kames, "it is an established fact that we are much influenced by custom. It hath an effect upon our pleasures, upon our actions, and even upon our thoughts and sentiments." Habit makes no figure during the vivacity of youth, in middle age it gains ground, and in old age governs without control. In that period of life, generally speaking, we eat at a certain hour, take exercise at a certain time, all by the direction of habit; nay, a particular seat, table, and bed comes to be essential, and a habit in any of these can not be contradicted without uneasiness. Man, it has been said, is a bundle of habits, and habit is a second nature. Metastasio entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of repetition in act and thought that he said, "All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself."

Beginning with single acts habit is formed slowly at first, and it is not till its spider's thread is woven in a thick cable that its existence is suspected. Then it is found that beginning in cobwebs it ends in chains. Gulliver was bound as fast by the Lilliputians with multiplied threads as if they had used ropes. "Like flakes of snow that fall unperceivedly upon the earth," says Jeremy Bentham, "the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another." As the snow gathers so are our habits formed; no single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change; no single action creates, however it may exhibit, a man's character. But as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, acting upon the elements of mischief which pernicious habits have brought together by imperceptible accumulation, may overthrow the edifice of truth and virtue.

The force of habit renders pleasant many things which at first were intensely disagreeable or even painful. Walking upon the quarter-deck of a vessel, though felt at first to be intolerably confined, becomes, by repetition, so agreeable to the sailor that, in his walks on shore, he often hems himself within the same bounds. Arctic explorers become so accustomed to the hardships incident to such a life that they do not enjoy the comforts of home when they return. So powerful is the effect of constant repetition of action that men whose habits are fixed may almost be said to have lost their free agency. Their actions become of the nature of fate, and they are so bound by the chains which they have woven for themselves that they do that which they have been accustomed to do even when they know it can yield neither pleasure nor profit.

Those who are in the power of an evil habit must conquer it as they can, and conquered it must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be obtained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom. They may effectually resolve to escape the tyrant whom they will vainly resolve to conquer. Be not slow in the breaking of a sinful custom; a quick, courageous resolution is better than a gradual deliberation; in such a combat he is the bravest soldier who lays about him without fear or wit. Wit pleads; fear disheartens. He who would kill hydra had better strike off one neck than five heads,—fell the tree and the branches are soon cut off. Vicious habits are so great a strain on human nature, said Cicero, and so odious in themselves that every person actuated by right reason would avoid them, though he were sure they would always be concealed both from God and man and had no future punishment entailed on them. Vicious habits, when opposed, offer the most vigorous resistance on the first attack; at each successive encounter this resistance grows weaker, until, finally, it ceases altogether, and the victory is achieved.

Such being the power of habit all can plainly see the importance of forming habits of such a nature that they shall constantly tend to increase our happiness, and to render more sure and certain that success the attaining of which is the object of all our endeavors. We may form habits of honesty or knavery, frugality or extravagance, of patience or impatience, self-denial or self-indulgence. In short, there is not a virtue nor a vice, not an act of body nor of mind, to which we may not be chained by this despotic power. It has been truly said that even happiness may become habitual. One may acquire the habit of looking upon the sunny side of things, or of looking upon the gloomy side. He may accustom himself, by a happy alchemy, to transmute the darkest events into materials for hopes. Hume, the historian, said that the habit of looking at the bright side of things was better than an income of a thousand pounds a year.

Habits which are to be commended are not to be formed in a day, nor by a few faint resolutions, not by accident, not by fits and starts—being one moment in a paroxysm of attention and the next falling into the sleep of indifference—are they to be obtained, but by steady, persistent efforts. Above all, it is necessary that they should be acquired in youth, for then do they cost the least effort. Like letters cut in the bark of a tree, they grow and widen with age. Once obtained they are a fortune of themselves, for their possessor has disposed thereby of the heavier end of the load of life; all the remaining he can carry easily and pleasantly. On the other hand, bad habits, once formed, will hang forever on the wheels of enterprise, and in the end will assert their supremacy, to the ruin and shame of their victim.

"I shot an arrow in the air; It fell on earth, I knew not where. * * * * * I breathed a song into the air; It fell on earth, I knew not where. * * * * * Long, long afterwards, in an oak, I found the arrow still unbroke, And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend."

—H. W. LONGFELLOW.

Influence is to a man what flavor is to fruit, or fragrance to the flower. It does not develop strength or determine character, but it is the measure of his interior richness and worth, and as the blossom can not tell what becomes of the odor which is wafted away from it by every wind, so no man knows the limit of that influence which constantly and imperceptibly escapes from his daily life, and goes out far beyond his conscious knowledge or remotest thought. Influence is a power we exert over others by our thoughts, words, and actions; by our lives, in short. It is a silent, a pervading, a magnetic, a most wonderful thing. It works in inexplicable ways. We neither see nor hear it, yet, consciously or unconsciously, we exert it.

Your influence is not confined to yourself or to the scene of your immediate actions; it extends to others, and will reach to succeeding ages. Future generations will feel the influence of your conduct. We all of us at times lose sight of this principle, and apparently act on the assumption that what we do or think or say can affect no one but ourselves. But we are so connected with the immortal beings around us, and with those who are to come after us, that we can not avoid exerting a most important influence over their character and final condition; and thus, long after we shall be no more—nay, after the world itself shall be no more—the consequences of our conduct to thousands of our fellow-men will be nothing less than everlasting destruction or eternal life. What we do is transacted on a stage of which all in the universe are spectators. What we say is transmitted in echoes that will never cease. What we are is influencing and acting on the rest of mankind. Neutral we can not be. Living we act, and dead we speak; and the whole universe is the mighty company, forever looking and listening; and all nature the tablets, forever recording the words, the deeds, the thoughts, the passions of mankind.

It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for every individual man, that his earthly influence, which has a commencement, will never through all ages have an end! What is done, is done—has already blended itself with the boundless, ever-living, ever-working universe, and will work there for good or evil, openly or secretly, throughout all time. The life of every man is as the well-spring of a stream, whose small beginnings are, indeed, plain to all, but whose course and destination, as it winds through the expanse of infinite years, only the Omniscient can discern. God has written upon the flower that sweetens the air, upon the breeze that rocks the flower upon its stem, upon the rain-drop that swells the mighty river, upon the dew-drops that refresh the smallest sprig of moss that rears its head in the desert, upon the ocean that rocks every swimmer in its channel, upon every penciled shell that sleeps in the caverns of the deep, as well as upon the mighty sun which warms and cheers the millions of creatures that live in its light,—upon all he has written, "None of us liveth to himself."

The babe that perished on the bosom of its mother, like a flower that bowed its head and drooped amid the death-frosts of time,—that babe, not only in its image, but in its influence, still lives and speaks in the chambers of the mother's heart. The friend with whom we took sweet counsel is removed visibly from the outward eye; but the lessons that he taught, the grand sentiments that he uttered, the deeds of generosity by which he was characterized, the moral lineaments and likeness of the man, still survive, and appear in the silence of eventide, and on the tablets of memory, and in the light of noon and dewy eve; and, though dead, he yet speaketh eloquently and in the midst of us. Every thing leaves a history and an influence. The pebble, as well as the planet, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountains, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum, the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop marks its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent.

The sun sets beyond the western hills, but the trail of light he leaves behind him guides the pilgrim to his distant home. The tree falls in the forest; but in the lapse of ages it is turned into coal, and our fires burn now the brighter because it grew and fell. The coral insect dies; but the reef it raised breaks the surge on the shores of great continents, or has formed an isle on the bosom of the ocean, to wave with harvests for the good of man. We live and we die, but the good or evil that we do lives after us, and is not "buried with our bones."

The career of great men remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears; but the thoughts and acts survive and leave an indelible stamp on his race. And thus the spirit of his life is prolonged, and thus perpetuated, molding the thought and will, and thereby contributing to form the character of the future. It is the men who advance in the highest and best directions who are the true beacons of human progress. They are as lights set upon a hill, illuminating the moral atmosphere around them; and the light of their spirit continues to shine upon all succeeding generations. The golden words that good men have uttered, the examples they have set, live through all time; they pass into the thoughts and hearts of their successors, help them on the road of life, and often console them in the hour of death. They live a universal life, speak to us from their graves, and beckon us on in the paths which they trod. Their example is still with us, to guide, to influence, and to direct us. Nobility of character is a perpetual bequest, living from age to age, and constantly tending to reproduce its like.