I was very much awed and delighted with the appearance
of the god of Wit; there was something so amiable, and yet so
piercing in his looks, as inspired me at once with love and terror.
As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy, he took a quiver of
arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me a present of it; but
as I was reaching out my hand to receive it of him, I knocked it
against a chair, and by that means awaked.
FRIENDSHIP.
Nos duo turba sumus.
OVID, Met. i. 355.
We two are a multitude.
One would think that the larger the company is, in which we are
engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be
started in discourse; but instead of this, we find that conversation
is never so much straitened and confined as in numerous assemblies.
When a multitude meet together upon any subject of discourse, their
debates are taken up chiefly with forms and general positions; nay,
if we come into a more contracted assembly of men and women, the
talk generally runs upon the weather, fashions, news, and the like
public topics. In proportion as conversation gets into clubs and
knots of friends, it descends into particulars, and grows more free
and communicative: but the most open, instructive, and unreserved
discourse is that which passes between two persons who are familiar
and intimate friends.
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