Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-02-28
THE FOOL FRIEND.
sEn Nye's Estimate of Him and Plan fer
His determination.

kS{n Ny2'S Estimate OF HIN anu ran icT
His determination.
There is certainly a grim and comfort
able 10y in going in search OF bitter and
fuplacable foe There is an exciting hun
ger IN the eve and in the heart as we fol-
low him by day and camp on his trail at
night Then when we meet and mix him
uD with the green sward, and knock his
front teeth loose and swell up his proud
nose, and put an oliye-green and cadet
blue dado over his eye and a cigarette
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 in
huence 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
tle funds in that way when we had IN
tended to invest them in other channels,
We cannot say We regret 1t If the cause
seemed lust and the provocation great.
But what shall we do with the warm,
personal friend who sits up nights 10 love
us but hurts us in every corner by his in
discretion? We cannot whip him and
throw him away. We cannot get him
shut up in IN insane asylum, because the
asylum was not designed for idiots. 1t was
made for people who once had brains. 1t
is conundrum which more than one of
us has given up.
If the tool friend could have his jaws
locked with a time-loeb, and then fed by an
attendant through the yest-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
cannot 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 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 Utmost
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 fami-
lies, how YOU smile through the day and
snore through the night, how earnest you
are in your lahors toward reform in every
thing except your own habits, and
thousand other little glimpses into your
home life which none but friend may
know, when he has no brains TO balance
his warm affection for You, think what
ruin he can furnish you at carload rates
in 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,
in the hurry and confusion incident to
creation, were bestowed upon large mouse
colored mule
When your friend forgets himself, forgets
his business, forgets his own interests and
his hopes of bright Immortality beyond
the grave, in order to go about and do you
rood, when he goes without sleep and food
and rest that he may help labor for you,
and at last. when the campaign Is drawing
toward close and at once you come upon
the wreck and ruin that mark the path
way of the hurricane, and You follow 1t In
great bitterness for miles only 1t last to
find that it is the work of your friend,
what can YOU do? Can YOU take club
aud mash his smiling face? Can you stab
his warm heart, whose every throb through
life has been for you? Can you send the
swift-winged bullet crushing through the
massive skull Of your friend, thus tearing
the cobwehs loose from his Uranium and
allowing the gas to escape?
All no. Better far to accept defeat than
to stain your hands with the blood Of one
whose very devotion TO YOU has showed
you under so deep that you will have to
live on the leather ends of your suspenders
till relief can come.
! sometimes think that if the fool-killer
would give 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 in
stance, suppose that he should, prior to
each election, hold q kind of competitive
examination Of fools, to close with a grand
tournament and fool shoot at thirty yards
rise: or the fool could be made to pay each
year for license, the revenue to so to the
Government, partial fools TO pay fifty
dollar license, chronic fools one hundred
dollars and hopeless fools two hundred
dollars per year I'd like to be instru-
mental in getting such = law passed, and
thon get out of the country before il went
into elect Ingleside.