Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1885-05-01
A Fool Friend.

a Fool Friend. 1lsss
There is certainly grim and COM
Portable Joy in going in search Of a
bitter and implacable foe. There is
an exciting hunger in the eve
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
no his proud nose, and put an olive
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 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 in
vest them in other channels, we can
not say that we regret it it the cause
seemed just and the provocation great.
But what shall we do with the
warm, personal friend who sets up
nights to love us but hurts us in every
corner by his discretion? We cannot
whip him and throw him away. We
cannot get him shut up in an insane
asylum, as it was not designed for
idiots. It was made for people who
once had brains. It is conundrum
which more than one of US has given
up.
If the fool friend could have his jaws
locked with a time-lock, and then be
fed by an attendant through the 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 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 inmost heart, who knows what
salary you receive and how much 1t
lacks of maintaining you, how mean
you are in your family and how pleas
ant you are IN other peoples 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 thousand other little glimpses
into your home life which none but a
friend may know, when he has no
brains to balance his warm affection
for you, think what ruin he can fur
nish you at carload rates.
In matters wholly political it is
really safer to have the endorsement
of one who is wise and wicked, some
times, 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 a large mouse
colored mule.
When your friend forgets himself,
forgets his business, forgets his own
interests and his hopes of bright im-
mortality beyond the grave, in order
to 60 about and do you good, when he
goes without sleep and food and rest
that he may labor for you, and at
last, when the campaign is drawing
toward a close and all at once you
come upon the wreck and ruin that
mark 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 club and 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 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 ends of
your suspenders till relief can come.
I sometimes think that if the fool
killer would give little more atten-
little harder to earn his salary, there
would be less complaint and less dis
satisfaction ON the part of the inteIli-
gent taxpayer. Now, for instance,
suppose that he should, prior to each
election, hold a kind of competitive
examination of fools, to close with q
grand tournament of fool-shot at
thirty yards rise; or the fool could be
made to pay each year for license,
the revenue to go t. the government,
partial fools to pay fifty dollar
license, chronic fools one hundred dol
lars, and hopeless fools two hundred
dollars per year. I'd like to be instru-
mental in getting such a law passed,
and then get out of the country before
it went into efect.-BlW Aye Ia the