Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

3i8 I^BYS LEWIS.
CHAPTER XXXrV.
THOIIAS HARTLEY ON A COLLEGIATE EDUCATION.
What is the indispensable requisite of friendship ? All simi-
larity of pursuit. Birds of a feather flock together. Does the
fact that two people are friends always presuppose that they
are of like dispositions if not ideas ? Not always, I imagine.
"When neither ideas nor inclinations are alike in the friends,
in what does their friendship consist? Mutual admiration
cannot account for it, for there may be admiration without
friendship, and friendship without admiration. I have known
one friend laugh at another who could not bear anybody else
to do so. Does friendship consist of some prerogative enjoyed,
as lord-paramount, by the heart independently of any instinct
of the soul ? I do not know. I know this— that Will Bryan
and myself were similar neither in dispositions nor ideas ; and
yet when he made his " exit," as he called it. my heart gave a
turn, and I shed internal tears. Until then I did not know we
were so close knit. I felt the effects of the unwinding for
months. Will's departure left a great void in my heart, as I
fear it will leave in this history, where he does not come
under notice again for some time. His prophecy with respect
to his father was fulfilled within the week ; but I have nothing
to do with that event. I got not a word from my old friend
after he left, which I took to be a bad sign, for I remembered
hearing him one day remark that, if he happened to leave home,
none of his companions should hear from him unless he had
good news to send, or something to relate equal in interest to
the capture of a wild elephant or a fight with a tiger.
Man tires of much talk about himself; and I do not tbink
anyone would undertake to write an autobiography except on
consideration that others whom he came in contact with would
figure largely in the work. Of greatest interest to me has that
been which I have learned from observing other people's ex-
cellences and defects. In the life of the ordinary young preach-
er there is a good deal of sameness ; his history this week will