My habits, my education, my former political connections, disqualified me for such association.
Since first I took my place among them, seven or eight years have now rolled by.

They have been years of severest trial, years of suffering and sorrow, years of passion and prejudice and calumny, years of rude and bitter conflict, years of suspicion and acrimony, and finally of defeat and shame; still, in that eventful course of time, to me at least, there has occurred no moment wherein I would exchange the faintest memory of our mutual trust, unreserved enjoyment and glad hope for the hoarse approval of an unthinking world.

There was no subject we did not discuss together; revolution, literature, religion, history, the arts, the sciences--every topic, and never yet was there spoken among us one reproachful word, never felt one distrustful sentiment.

Our confidence in one another was precisely that of each in himself; our love of one another deeper than brotherly.

When we met, which was at least weekly, and felt alone, shut in from the rude intrusion of the world, how we used to people the future with beauty and happiness and love.