is dusted, all things fly into their places, the old coat is exchanged for the new, and they must get up a dinner if they can.  Of a commended stranger, only the good report is told by others, only the good and new is heard by us.  He stands to us for humanity.  He is, what we wish.  Having imagined and invested him, we ask how we should stand related in conversation and action with such a man, and are uneasy with fear.  The same idea exalts conversation with him.  We talk better than we are wont.  We have the nimblest fancy, a richer memory, and our dumb devil has taken leave for the time.  For long hours we can continue a series of sincere, graceful, rich communications, drawn from the oldest, secretest experience, so that they who sit by, of our own kinsfolk and acquaintance, shall feel a lively surprise at our unusual powers.  But as soon as the stranger begins to intrude his partialities, his definitions, his defects, into the conversation, it is all over.  He has heard the first, the last and best, he will ever hear from us.  He is no stranger now.  Vulgarity, ignorance, misapprehension, are old acquaintances.  Now, when he comes, he may get the order, the dress, and the dinner, but the throbbing of the heart, and the communications of the soul, no more.

4.  What is so pleasant as these jets of affection which relume[279] a young world for me again?  What is so delicious as a just and firm encounter of two, in a thought, in a feeling?  How beautiful, on their approach to this beating heart, the steps and forms of the gifted and the true!  The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed; there is no winter, and no night; all tragedies, all ennuis vanish; all duties even; nothing fills the proceeding eternity but the forms all radiant of beloved persons.  Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.

5.  I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.  Shall I not call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts?  I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my gate.[280] Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine,—­a possession for all time.  Nor is nature so poor, but she gives me this joy several times, and thus we weave social threads of our own, a new web of relations; and, as many thoughts in succession substantiate themselves, we shall by-and-by stand in a new world of our own creation, and no longer strangers and pilgrims is a traditionary globe.  My friends have come[281] to me unsought.  The great God gave them to me.  By oldest right, by the divine affinity of virtue with itself, I find them, or rather, not I, but the Deity in me and in them, both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual character, relation, age,