Knoxville journal. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1874-1986, 1875-05-13
Old Friends.

Old FRIENDS.
There are old friends who make the
fact Of old friendship a basis for every
kind of unpleasantness. Their opinion
is not asked but they volunteer it on all
occasions, and are sure to give it in the
manner which gals you most, and which
you can least resent. They snub you be-
fore your latest neutrality-suspicious.
ing people of good status, with whom
you especially desire to stand we'll; and
break up your pretensions of present su-
periority by that sledge-hammer of old
friendship which knocks you down to
the ground and will stand no nonsense.
The mere formal and fastidious your
company the more they will rasp your
nerves by the coarse familiarity of their
address and they know no greater pleas
ure than to put you in an entirely false
position by pretending to keep you ia
your true place. They run in on you at
all times, and you have neither an hour
undIsturbed nor pursuit uninterrupted,
still less circumstance of your life kept
sacred from them. The strictest orders
to your servants are ignored, and they
push past any amount of verbal barriers
with the irresistible force of old friend.
ship to which nothing can be denied.
Whatever you are dong you can just
see them, they say, smilingly; and they
have neither conscience nor compassion
when they come and eat up your time,
which is your money, for the qualification
of hearing themselves talk, and OF learn
ing how you are getting on. They do
not scrnple to ask about your affairs di-
rect questions to which you must per-
force give an answer, silence or evasion
betraying the truth as much as assent !;
and they will make you present of their
mind on the matter, which, though high
ly uncomplimentary, you are expected to
accept with becoming gratitude and
humility. If you have known them in
your early boyhood, when you were all
unciviliZed hail fellows together, they re-
will Tom, Dick and Harry you to the
end, though you sit in horsehair wig ON
the bench, while your classmate of the
country grammar-school, where you both
got your rudiments, is only city clerk,
badly paid, and married to his landlady's
daughter. To women this kind of re-
turn to the grave of the past is dread
full infection and ofttimes danger. The
Of the romping, hoyden-
ish days dash hume, bearded and
bronZed, from Australia or California;
stride into the refined circle of calm
with the old familiar
manner and the old familiar terms; ask
ing Fan or Nell if she remembers this or
that adventure on the mouniain-side, by
the lake, in the wood-topping their
query by meaning laugh, as If more re-
NAMED behind than it was expedient to
declare. The wife is on thorns all the
time these hateful visits last; she won
ders how she could ever have been
on romping terms with such horror
even in her youngest days, and feels that
she shall hate her own name after hear
ing it mouthed and bawled by her old
friend with such aggressive familiarity.
The husband, if jealous by nature, begins
to look sullen and suspicious. Even if
he is not jealous, but only reserved and
he does not like what he
sees, still less what he hears; and is
more than half-inclined to think that he
has made mistake, or that Fan or Nell
of his bosom would have been better
mated with the old friend from the back
woods than with him.
The old friends who turn up in this
way at all corners OF your life are sure to
be needy, and to hold their old friend
ship as per sc claim on your balance at
the bank They stick closer to you
than brother, and you are expected to
stick close to them; and as sign there
of, to provide for their necessities as so
much interest on the old account of af-
lection still running If you shrink
from them and try to shun them quietly
they 60 about the world proclaiming
your ingratitude and trumpeting both
their claims and their deserts. They
deride your present success, which they
call stuck-up and mushroom, telling all
the minor miseries of your past, when
your father found it. hard to provide
suitably for his large family and their
mother had more than once to give
yours a child's frock and pinafore in
pity for your rags They generally con-
trive to make division In your circle
and you find some Of your new friends
look coldly on you because it is said you
have been ungrateful to your old. The
coinage of vanity and disappointment;
but when did the world stop TO prove
the truth before it cohdemnedg
1ucTC 10 ~ OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES ~ dCCbucutdl,
no Kindness so trivial, that it cannot be
made to constitute claim to friendship
for life and all that friendship includes
intimacy before. the world, pecuniary
help when needed, no denial of time, no
family secrets, unvarying inclusion in all
your entertainments, personal participa,
ton in all your successes, liberty to say
unpleasant things without offense, to in
terfere in your arrangements and 10 take
at least one corner of your soul, and that
not a small one, which is not to be your
own, but theirs. Have they by the mer-
est chance introduced to your husband
the beautiful heiress, to your wife the
good match"-the world echoes with
the news and the echoes are never suf-
fered to die out. It is told everywhere
and always as if your happy marriage
were the object they had had in view
from the earliest times, as il they
had lived and worked for a consumma-
tion which came about by the purest ac-
cident Have they been helpful and
friendly when your first child was born,
or nursery sickness was in your
house-you are bought for life, you
and your offspring; unless you have
had the happy thought of making them
sponsors, when they learn the knack of
disappearing from your immediate circle,
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