194 The Life Worth Living 



not one word about pleasure, or laughter, or 

 kisses, or any quality of flesh and blood. It 

 was not inappropriate, surely, that he had such 

 close relations with the fishes. We can under- 

 stand the friend already quoted when he cried : 

 "As for taking his arm, I would as soon think 

 of taking the arm of an elm-tree." It is not 

 surprising that he experienced but a broken 

 enjoyment in his intimacies ; he went to see his 

 friends as one might stroll in to see a cricket- 

 match not simply for the pleasure of the 

 thing, but with some afterthought of self-im- 

 provement. It was his theory that people saw 

 each other too frequently; they had nothing 

 fresh to communicate; friendship with him 

 meant a society for mutual improvement. 



"The only obligation," says he, "which I 

 have a right to assume is to do at any time 

 what I think right." "Why should we ever 

 go abroad, even across the way to ask a neigh- 

 bor's advice?" "There is a nearer neighbor 

 within who is incessantly telling us how we 

 should behave. But we wait for the neighbor 

 without to tell us of some faults." " The greater 

 part of what my neighbors call good I believe 



