There is no place like the
chimney-corner for confidences; for picking up the clews of an old
friendship; for taking note where one's self has drifted, by
comparing ideas and prejudices with the intimate friend of years ago,
whose course in life has lain apart from yours. No stranger puzzles
you so much as the once close friend, with whose thinking and
associates you have for years been unfamiliar. Life has come to mean
this and that to you; you have fallen into certain habits of thought;
for you the world has progressed in this or that direction; of
certain results you feel very sure; you have fallen into harmony with
your surroundings; you meet day after day people interested in the
things that interest you; you are not in the least opinionated, it is
simply your good fortune to look upon the affairs of the world from
the right point of view. When you last saw your friend,--less than a
year after you left college,--he was the most sensible and agreeable
of men; he had no heterodox notions; he agreed with you; you could
even tell what sort of a wife he would select, and if you could do
that, you held the key to his life.
Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day from the antipodes.
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