Who shall explain the extraordinary instinct that tells us, perhaps after a single meeting, that this or that particular person in some mysterious way matters to us?  The person in question may have no attractive gifts of intellect or manner or personal appearance; but there is some strange bond between us; we seem to have shared experience together, somehow and somewhere; he is interesting, whether he speaks or is silent, whether he agrees or disagrees.  We feel that in some secret region he is congenial.  Est mihi nescio quid quod me tibi temperat astrum, says the old Latin poet—­“There is something, I know not what, which yokes our fortunes, yours and mine.”  Sometimes indeed we are mistaken, and the momentary nearness fades and grows cold.  But it is not often so.  That peculiar motion of the heart, that secret joining of hands, is based upon something deep and vital, some spiritual kinship, some subtle likeness.

Of course, we differ vastly in our power of attracting and feeling attraction.  I confess that, for myself, I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile.  That hope survives a thousand disappointments; yet most of us tend to make fewer friends as time goes on, partly because we have not so much emotional activity to spare, partly because we become more cautious and discreet; and partly, too, because we become more aware of the responsibilities which lie in the background of a friendship, and because we tend to be more shy of responsibility.  Some of us become less romantic and more comfortable; some of us become more diffident about what we have to give in return; some of us begin to feel that we cannot take up new ideas—­none of them very good reasons perhaps; but still, for whatever reason, we make friends less easily.  The main reason probably is that we acquire a point of view, and it is easier to keep to that, and fit people in who accommodate themselves to it, than to modify the point of view with reference to the new personalities.  People who deal with life generously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to the end.

Of course, as I have said, there are infinite grades of friendship, beginning with the friendship which is a mere camaraderie arising out of habit and proximity; and every one ought to be capable of forming this last relationship.  The modest man, said Stevenson, finds his friendships ready-made; by which he meant that if one is generous, tolerant, and ungrudging, then, instead of thinking the circle in which one lives inadequate, confined, and unsympathetic, one gets the best out of it, and sees the lovable side of ordinary human beings.  Such friendships as these can evoke perhaps the best and simplest kind of loyalty.  It is said that in countries where oxen are used for ploughing in double harness, there are touching instances of an ox pining away, and even dying, if he loses his accustomed yoke-fellow.  There are such human friendships, sometimes formed on a blood relationship, such as the friendship of a brother and a sister; and sometimes a marriage transforms itself into this kind of camaraderie, and is a very blessed, quiet, beautiful thing.