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Show INVIOLABLE. - A friend's secret is ever his property, even when confided to another. The confidant should lock it up, even from his own thoughts. He should not be content with refraining from betraying it to others, he should also refrain from betraying it to himself. If a man consigns a casket containing treasures to the car of another, he will easily feel that his confidence has been a degree violated, if he comes to know that the latter has been in the habit of unlocking the casket and pouring over its contents day after day as if it were his own, and that, too, in an exposed position. So with the secret. Though confided to a friend, it still belongs to him by whom it was confided, who has his own reasons for performing this act of friendship; and to have it continually before the mind is not only making, in one sense, another's property one's own, but it is exposed to the danger of escaping at any unguarded moment in one form or another, sufficiently at least to give grounds to surmises which may closely bear upon the truth. |