For it is by this sign we choose companions and books.  Not that they are the best persons or the best thoughts; but some subtile affinity attracts and invites as to another self.  In the choosing of companions there seems to be no choice at all.  “We meet, we know not how or when; and though we should remember the history, yet friendship has an anterior history we know not of.  We all have friends, but the one want of the soul is a friend,—­that other self, that one without whom man is incomplete and but the opaque face of a planet.  For such we patiently wait and hope, knowing that when we become worthy of him, continents, nor caste, nor opinion can separate us.”

A like experience is known to the young man in his reading.  ’Tis in vain to advise as to reading; a higher power controls the matter.  Of course there are some books all must read, as every one learns the alphabet and spelling-book; but his use and combination of them he shall share with no one.  Some spiritual power is ever drawing us towards what we love.  Thus in books one constantly meets his own idea, his own feelings, even his most private ones, which he thought could not be known or appreciated beyond his own bosom.  Therefore he quickly falls in love with those books that discover him to himself, and that are the keepers of his secrets.  Here is a part of himself written out in immortal letters.  Here is that thought long dimly haunting the mind, but which never before found adequate expression.  Here is a memorable passage transcribed out of his experience.

The fascination of books consists in their revelations of the half-conscious images of the reader’s mind.  There is a wonderful likeness and coincidence in the thoughts of men.  But not alone in books does one meet his own image at every turn.  He beholds himself strewn in a thousand fragments throughout the world; and all his culture is nothing but assimilation of himself to them, until he can say with wise Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.”

Thus Nature compels the youth to seek every means of stimulating himself to activity.  He has learned that in periods of transition and change fresh life flows in upon him, dilating the heart and disclosing new realms of thought.  He thanks the gods for every mood, Doric or dithyrambic, for each new relation, for each new friend, and even for his sorrows and misfortunes.  Out of these comes the complete wisdom which shall make old age but another more fair and perfect youth.  Even the face and form shall be fortified against time and fate.  In the physiognomy of age much personal history is revealed.  The dimples and folds of infancy have become the furrows of thought and care.  Yet, sometimes retaining their original beauty, they are an ornament, and in them we read the record of deep thought and experience.

But the wrinkles of some old people are characterless; running in all directions, appearing as though a finely-woven cloth had left its impress upon the face, revealing a life aimless and idle, or distracted by a thousand cross-purposes and weaknesses.