Friendly Talk

But after all, the very best thing in good talk, and the thing that helps it most, is friendship. How it dissolves the barriers that divides us and loosens all constraint and diffuse itself like some fine old cordial through all the veins of life — this feeling that we understand and trust each other and wish each other heartily well! Everything into which it really comes is good. It transforms letter-writing from a task into a pleasure. It makes music a thousand times more sweet. The people who play and sing not at us, but to us — how delightful it is so listen to them! Yes, there is a talkability that can express itself even without words. There is an exchange of thought and feeling which is happy alike in speech and in silence. It is quietness pervaded with friendship.

Henry van Dyke

(Stolen blatantly from some Mason-esque mail of Luke’s.)