between such tried friends. Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when
the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and
not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality.
This good-fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately
seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours,
but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded
feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot
quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as
steam.