We often say pretty things to an acquaintance, and omit them to a friend, “because she knows us, and we need not be ceremonious.”  But ceremony is not half such a bad thing as this age seems to think; it may be overdone, but so may its opposite.  Why should we not give our friend the pleasure of this or that acknowledgment of her powers, which a stranger would give her, but which she would value far more from us, even though she “knows we know” it?  Saying those things makes the wheels of life’s chariot run smoothly,—­we think them, why are we so slow to say them?  Why should “the privilege of a friend” be synonymous with a cutting remark?  Why should we all have reason to feel that “friend” might, without any violation of truth, be substituted for the last word in that acute remark on the “fine frankness about unpleasant truths which marks the relative”?  Well might Bob Jakes say, “Lor, miss, it’s a fine thing to hev’ a dumb brute fond o’ yer! it sticks to yer and makes no jaw.”  This question of making no “jaw” is rather a vexed one.  Most people’s experience would lead them to attend to a canny Dutch proverb, which observes that a “friend’s” faults may be noticed but not blamed:  since the consequences of blaming them are mostly unpleasant; but a braver proverb says, “A true friend dares sometimes venture to be offensive;” and we read that it is our duty to “admonish a friend; it may be that he hath not said it, and, if he have, that he speak it not again.”  But this earnest remonstrance which is sometimes required of us is very different from the small, nagging, and somewhat impertinent criticisms which pass so freely between many friends.  But defending an absent friend is not the only point of honour essential in true friendship.  At the present time the Roman virtues seem somewhat at a discount,—­they are suspected of a flavour of Paganism; it is more in accordance with the Genius of our Age to show our interest in our friend by talking over his moral and spiritual condition (and par parenthese, all his other affairs) with a sympathizing circle, than to heed the old-fashioned idea, “He that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.”  How often do we hear, “I wouldn’t, for the world, tell any one but you, but—­;” and then follows a string of repeated confidences which the friend under discussion would writhe to hear; yet the speaker would be most indignant at being considered dishonourable, because “it was only said to So-and-so, which is so different from saying it to any one else”!  The Son of Sirach made no exception in favour of “So-and-so” when he said, “Rehearse not unto another that which is told unto thee, and thou shall fare never the worse.”  If it be true of a wife, that “a silent and loving woman is a gift of the Lord,” I am sure it is no less so of a friend; in friendship, as in most relations of life, silence, in its season, is a cardinal virtue.