Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 27 October 1887.

Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 6).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Note: Unrecorded and unreprinted.

Today, an old and trusted friend is dead. His corpse was carried out from my presence at noon, but I did not weep over him as he lay in the casket, placid and unmoved. What was I to him, or he to me? Our roads lay apart henceforward.

As the friendship of David towards Jonathan, so was the friendship of my friend to me. He was stronger in every way than I, masterful and overbearing at times, but I loved him none the less. I was not fitted to walk alone; help and counsel were as necessary to me as the breath of my nostrils – help for the hand to execute what the brain had, after due advisement, conceived. I took both gifts from my friend, lightly and without heed; never imagining for a moment that he would be called away.

Sitting now, opposite the empty place by the table, and reviewing his virtues dispassionately, I am inclined to think that, perhaps, my friend was hardly judicious in all the advice he gave me. For a contained character, his enthusiasm and buoyancy, amounting almost to spiritual effervescence, were startling and threw outsiders, unacquainted with his merits, off their balance. They were incapable of forming a just estimate of his character; but succumbed at once to the irresistible verve and élan that he threw into the conversation. I myself have been carried away by this peculiarity, and, under its influence, have lent myself to actions of which my isolated judgment can hardly approve. To do him justice, my friend never failed to read me lectures on the folly of my proceedings – generally in the early morning when I could have best dispensed with his presence. My friend was hardly logical, seeing that the deeds whereof he bade me repent had been committed when he was at my elbow – at his direct instigation in fact.