The Monitor., 1885-07-31
A FOOL FRIEND.
Bill Nye Thinks He is Worse than
Bitter Foe

Bitter Foe.
able joy in going in seach of bitter and
implacable foe. There is All exciting
| hunger in the eye and in the heart as we
follow him by day and camp on his trail
at night. Then when we meet and mix
him up with the green sward, and knock
his front teeth loose and swell up his
proud nose, and put all olive-green and
cadet-blue dado over his eye and a cigar
cite pocket on his cheek. and erect little
knobs all over him in places where nature
did not design to have them, we walk
away with the idea that We are taller and
wider and draw more water and exert
more influence than we did before Even
when we ask the police judge how much
it will be if we pay it in advance, and we
use up the funds in that way when we
had intended to invest them in other chan
nels, we can not say that we regret it if
the cause seemed just and the provoca-
tion great.
| But what shall we do with the warm
personal friend who sits up nights to love
u.s. but hurts us in every corner by his in
discretion! We can not whip him and
throw him away. We can not get him
shut up in an insane asylum, as it was
not designed for idiots. 1t was made for
people who once had brains. 1t is a
conundrum which more than one of us has
| given up.
! If the fool friend could have his jaws
| locked with time-lock, and then be fed
by an attendent through his vest pocket
we could then set the time-lock to open
after election or just before breakfast on
the day of judgment, or at such other date
as we desired and all would be well, but
you can not do that. The jaw of the fool
| friend wags on and on till the goose of the
one he loves best on earth is cooked to a
rich, deep brown.
An enemy may say mean things of you,
but they lose force, because people know
at once by his bitterness that he is your
enemy; but he who knows your inmost
heart, who knows what salary you receive
and how much it lacks of maintaining you,
how mean you are in your family and how
pleasant you are in other peoples's families,
how you smile through the day and snore
through the night, how earnest you are in
your labors toward reform in everything
except your own habits, and a thousand
other little glimpses into your home life
/ x,.1; I'll,
| he has no brains to balance his warm affec-
tion for you, think what ruin he can fur
nish you at car load rates.
Tn matters wholly political it is really
safer to have the endorsement of one who
is wise and wicked, sometimes, than the
earnest but misguided efforts of the man
whose motives are good but whose brains,
i'll the hurry and confusion incident to
mouse colored mule.
When your friend forgets himself for
gets his business forgets his own interests
and his hopes of bright immortality be-
do you good, when he goes without food
and sleep and rest that he may labor for
you, and at last when the campaign is
drawing toward close and all at once you
come upon the wreck and ruin that marks
the pathway of the hurricane, and you
follow it in great bitterness for miles, only
at last to find that it is the work of your
friend, what can you do? Can you take a
oI,1ll nd I, In, "a
stab his warm heart, whose every throb
through life has been for you? Can you
send the swift-winged bullet crashing
through the massive skull of your friend,
thus tearing the cobwebs loose from his
Uranium and allowing the gas to escape?
All, no. Better far to accept defeat than
to stain your hands with blood of one
whose very devotion to you has showed
you under so deep that you will have to
live on the leather end of your suspenders
until relief can come.
| sometimes think that if the fool-killer
would give a little more attention to his
business, and would try little harder to
earn his salary, there would be less COM
plant and less dissatisfaction on the part
of the intelligent taxpayer. Now, for
instance, suppose that he should, prior
to each election, hold kind of competi-
tive examination of fools, to close with a
grand tournament of fool-shot at 30 yards
rise, or the fool could be made to pay each
year for a license, the revenue TO 60 to the
government, partial fools to pay $50
license chronic fools 800, and hopeless
fools 5000 per year. I'd like to be instru-
mental in getting such law passed, and
then get out of the country before it went
into effect.
81 wouldn't worry about the cholera,
dear said a wife to her husband; lit isn't
Al.