GROWING AWAY FROM OUR LOVED ONES.
Nor going away from them, but growing apart from them, which is surely the sadder experience! When those we love leave us for a journey, for an exile, or for Heaven, our hearts bridge the chasm between us with a hope of future gladness when we shall meet again. But when there comes “the little rift within the lute, that by and by shall make the music mute,” we have no such consolation. What so unsatisfactory as a patched-up friendship? What so impossible as the healing of an intangible, unconfessed wound? Love can survive a good, honest quarrel, and flourish more thriftily sometimes when a summer storm has cleared the sultry atmosphere and swept away the cobwebs, but woe to love when the frost of indifference settles blightingly upon it, or when two who started by being all the world to each other, end by revolving, like ivory balls, in orbits of their own. Sometimes this torpor of love, which is simply a slow death, falls on wedded hearts, and then the home suffers. Sometimes brothers and sisters allow the crowding cares of life to separate them. Sometimes friends give each other up, and lose the strength and help and mutual support which comes of congenial intercourse, simply through sheer indolence, inertia, or selfishness. It takes a little time and trouble to go and pay a call or make a visit. To write a letter requires exertion. So the friend is neglected, and naturally, after a while, the friendship becomes like a worn-out tree, which no longer offers sweet fruit for the plucking. It is inevitable that as we go on in life changes shall come to ourselves, our homes, our friends, and our work.83Youth is full of fiery impulses, of generous ardor, and of quick decisions. Middle-age moves more cautiously and with less enthusiasm. The evening of life is calm, serene, tolerant, and patient. As a rule, when we are young, we make friends easily and often. In maturity we are apt to grow cautious and careful. But we need, as we advance in years, to cultivate our friends, to be careful to show them attention, and to prize at their true worth dear ones who have stood loyally beside us in sorrow, in joy, and through evil and good report.—Christian at Work.