There were many others with whom he had been intimate--Barrington Erle, Laurence Fitzgibbon, Mr.Monk, a politician who had been in the Cabinet, and in consequence of whose political teaching he, Phineas Finn, had banished himself from the political world;--from none of these had he received a line till there came that letter summoning him back to the battle.

There had never been a time during his late life in Dublin at which he had complained to himself that on this account his former friends had forgotten him.

If they had not written to him, neither had he written to them.

But on his first arrival in England he had, in the sadness of his solitude, told himself that he was forgotten.
There would be no return, so he feared, of those pleasant intimacies which he now remembered so well, and which, as he remembered them, were so much more replete with unalloyed delights than they had ever been in their existing realities.

And yet here he was, a welcome guest in Lord Chiltern's house, a welcome guest in Lady Chiltern's drawing-room, and quite as much at home with them as ever he had been in the old days.
Who is there that can write letters to all his friends, or would not find it dreary work to do so even in regard to those whom he really loves?
When there is something palpable to be said, what a blessing is the penny post! To one's wife, to one's child, one's mistress, one's steward if there be a steward; one's gamekeeper, if there be shooting forward; one's groom, if there be hunting; one's publisher, if there be a volume ready or money needed; or one's tailor occasionally, if a coat be required, a man is able to write.