Conversation will not corrupt us if we come to the assembly in our own garb and speech and with the energy of health to select what is ours and reject what is not. Society we must have; but let it be society, and not exchanging news or eating from the same dish. Is it society to sit in one of your chairs ? I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not other-wise.

Put any company of people together with freedom for conversation, and a rapid self-distribution takes place into sets and pairs. The best are accused of exclusiveness. It would be more true to say they separate as oil from water, as children from old people, without love or hatred in the matter, each seeking his like; and any interference with the affinities would produce constraint and suffocation. All conversation is a magnetic experiment. I know that my friend can talk eloquently ; you know that he cannot articulate a sentence : we have seen him in different company. Assort your party, or invite none. Put Stubbs and Coleridge, Quintilian and Aunt Miriam, into pairs, and you make them all wretched. Leave them to seek their own mates, and they will be as merry as sparrows.

Sadly, it's hardly realized as more often than not, those closest to you takes the bond which existed for granted. And when they've gone twilight, we often find ourselves asking - Why?