by one who has written with a woman's tenderness and a woman's truth:

"A year ago to-day, love, for the space

Of a brief, sudden moment, richly fraught

With deeper meaning than our light hearts thought,

You held my hand and looked into the face

Which, poor in gifts, has since by God's good grace
Grown dear to you; and the full year has brought
Friendship, and love, and marriage; yet has taught
My heart to call you in its sacred place
Still by the earliest name;-for you who are
My lover and my husband, and who bring
Heaven close around me, will not let me cling
To that near heaven; but tempt my soul afar
By your ideals for me ;-till life end,
My calm, dispassionate, sincerest friend." 1

Wherever there is a pure and unselfish love for another for that other's own sake, a love contingent neither on its return nor on its recognition, there is a true friendship, whether there be any other relation than this between the loving and the loved, or not. Friendship is, in fact, distinct from even the choicest other relationship with which it may coexist.

II.

FRIENDSHIP IN HISTORY.

HE world's history is the history of individuals whom God has used in the helping forward of the world's progress. Every epoch of history has its center in some man who, for the time being, is the embodiment of the mental and moral forces that are making and marking that epoch. And, back of the man who is the leader of men, there is always the special force of that sentiment which influences and impels him in the direction of his providential leading. Hence it follows that the sentiment which is most potent as a factor in man's best being and doing is most potent as a factor in the world's highest achieving and truest progress.

Ambition and avarice and love are known to have power over men in every field of human endeavor, and patriotism and religion are recognized as supreme incitements to self-denying efforts on the part of the children of men. But friendship is a sentiment that transcends all loves, and that represents the purest, the most selfabnegating, and the noblest affection, in a man's relations to his fellows, to his country, and to his God; and therefore the sentiment of friendship is, in its nature, of surpassing potency in swaying those persons who, in their generation, are enabled to sway the forces of the living world. It is the master-passion of humanity.

This is not a matter of unprovable theory; on the contrary, it is one capable of illustration and proof out of all the pages of human history. In the councils of state, in the clash of arms, in the molding of social customs, in the aspirations of religious endeavor, in the movements of civil reform, in the researches of philosophic thought, in the creations of literature and art, and in every other realm of thinking or doing, friendship has evidenced itself as an element of charactershaping and character-swaying, beyond any other sentiment or passion that shows itself as a factor in controlling and directing the human mind and heart.

Friendship has, in all ages, shown its power to restrain ambition, to hold avarice in check, to triumph over selfish love, to render more wisely effective the best instincts of patriotism, and to give increased purity and sacredness to religious thought and feeling and action. Friendship has had its strongest hold on those who were strongest, and has done its best work in the best natures. Not the base but the nobler, not the low but the lofty, not the dependent but the self-contained, in all spheres of life, seem to value most, and to be best fitted for, the gains and privileges and responsibilities of friendship. And therefore it is that friendship is most potent with those whose potency with others is greatest.