The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1875-05-13
mated with the old friend from the back
wOO6a 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 a 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 ali
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 a 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
whole story may be myth, the mere
coinage of vanity and disappointment;
but when did the world stop to prove
the truth before it condemned?
There is no circumstance so accidental,
no kindness so trivial, that it cannot be
made to constitute o 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 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-
and always as if your happy marriage
were the object they had had in view
from the earliest times, as if they
had lived and worked for consumma.
ton 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,
and of only turning up on the formal oc-
| casions which do not admit of making
presents. Did they introduce you to
your first employer-your subsequent
success is the work of their hands, and
they bear your fame on their shoulders
like complacent Aliases balancing the
world. They 60 about cackling to every
one who will listen to them how it was
they who got your first essay into print
how it was they who mentioned your
name to the commissioners, and how, in
consequence, the commissioners gave
you that place whence dates your mar,
velous rise in life; low it was they who
advised your father to send you to sea
and to make a man of you, and were the
indirect cause of your K. c. B. -ship. But
for them you would have been a mere
nobody, grubbing in dingy city Office
to this day.-Saturday Reoieao.