—­You remember the old story of the tender-hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was stung by it when it became thawed?  If we take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it should sting us and we should die than that its chill should slowly steal into our hearts; warm it we never can!  I have seen faces of women that were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were forming round these women’s hearts.  I knew what freezing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces!

A very simple intellectual mechanism answers the necessities of friendship, and even of the most intimate relations of life.  If a watch tells us the hour and the minute, we can be content to carry it about with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch,—­though it is not enamelled nor jewelled,—­in short, though it has little beyond the wheels required for a trustworthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of useful hands.  The more wheels there are in a watch or a brain, the more trouble they are to take care of.  The movements of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very nature.  A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friendship.—­Observe, I am talking about minds.  I won’t say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason;—­but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away with the heart’s best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question.

If one’s intimate in love or friendship cannot or does not share all one’s intellectual tastes or pursuits, that is a small matter.  Intellectual companions can be found easily in men and books.  After all, if we think of it, most of the world’s loves and friendships have been between people that could not read nor spell.

But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip,—­this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings,—­most of all in that perpetual auto da fe where young womanhood is the sacrifice.

—­You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the loves and friendships of illiterate persons,—­that is, of the human race, with a few exceptions here and there.  I like books,—­I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses.  I don’t think I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors.  But I can’t help remembering that the world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.  The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel honored by his company.