Another thing which tends to extinguish friendships is that many of
the people who desire to form them, and who do form them, wish to
have the pleasures of friendship without the responsibilities. In
the self-abandonment of friendship we become aware of qualities and
strains in the friend which we do not wholly like. One of the most
difficult things to tolerate in a friend are faults which are
similar without being quite the same. A common quality, for
instance, in the Anglo-Saxon race, is a touch of vulgarity, which
is indeed the quality that makes them practically successful. A
great many Anglo-Saxon people have a certain snobbishness, to give
it a hard name; it is probably the poison of the feudal system
lurking in our veins. We admire success unduly; we like to be
respected, to have a definite label, to know the right people.
I remember once seeing a friendship of a rather promising kind
forming between two people, one of whom had a touch of what I may
call "county" vulgarity, by which I mean an undue recognition of
"the glories of our birth and state.
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