Arizona republican., 1891-11-15

that thrilled more keenly through every heart that has awakened to knowledge of itself and the world around it.
 Human nature is pathetically credu- lous as to the possibilities of happiness, until dire experience has proved the fal- lacy of its beliefs, and is so patient that not one, but many, disappointments are needed to dispel the mirage the neophyte has mistaken for wells of water and shadowing palms.
 Chief among these cruel illusions is the belief in disinterested friendship and unseltish affection, belief so sweet and so satisfying that one parts with it only after a struggle that threatens to rend soul and body asunder.
 At first we fancy the world is filled with our well wishers and possible friends, that we have only to choose among these loyal hearts, all eager to respond to our own, and to give love for love, confidence for confidence, faith for faith; the only trouble is an emGqrrds de richeSSe; there is not time to gather all the flowers that crowd our path, we can only have dozen or so of really intimate friends, although we feel sure that dozen more just as loyal, just as loving, just as sympathetic are standing in a sort of outer circle only waiting to step into the places of the first.
 And then we begin to narrow the circle, Perhaps there are no more than ten righteous men in the city, but sure. 1x. NA,. cry, Not ten! Then five! Grant me five loyal and honest hearts and I will be content. But do we find five? Tell me. you who read this, can you count upon the fingers of one hand five souls to whom you can give in fullest meaning the grand title of friend; whom you can trust utterly and fearlessly; who will choose your advantage before their own; who will swear and disappoint you not, though it were to their own hurt.
 And again the years go on, and do they leave us one? If one; if life has left you one friend who is to you what in the beginning you expected everybody to be, then your fortune is exceptional; then you have a right to thank God for most unusual indulgence.
 It is often said the very poor are more charitable, more self sacrificing, more truly friendly to each other than those having more means of doing good, and so far as the friendship goes can well believe it, for it is those who have the power of bestowing favors who are most often and most cruelty disappointed.
 A generous and uususpicious person, having the power, delights in using that power for the benefit of the friend whom one feels sure would do as much or more for ones self, but after awhile, and after some rude shocks to that pleasant belief, suddenly awakes to the unpleasant fact that not only is she using her power voluntarily, but is involun- tarily and unconsciously being made use of, and that she is valued net so much for what she is as for what she has. Few discoveries act more like a bucket of cold water upon the warmth of unsuspicious friendship than this, but yet it is not fatal; the true friend makes excuses for the false friends infirmities, and throws the mantle of her own great love over the others insufficiency.
 "Poor darling. She needs the money she made by that transaction, and did not like to say so; or, of course, she wants to get on in the world, and did not realize that what she said would injure me, while helping her!" and so on.
 One cannot advocate special pleading and casuistry in general, but when it becomes the refuge of loving heart, trying to hide from its own disillusion- ments the affirmation that black is white, and the sun is shining in the midst of a storm of sleet and frosty rain, it becomes respectable, nay, pathetic and almost convincing.
 Yes, we are willing to be made use of because we can still trust that our friend loves us so dearly and so truly, is in fact so nearly one with ourself that the ad- vantage gained is in one sense an ad- vantage to ourselves, or at the least that our friend so supposed and intended it. But life is cruel, and experience is pitt less, and time is the enemy of illusion; and, alas, how often we are compelled to verify in the bitterness of our own hearts the old cynical apothegm that to confer favor is to make an enemy, or, in other words, a poor nature always dislikes those by whom it has benefited.
 The false friend, not content with using us, soon proceeds to abuse us, and having found in our name a talisman to open gates of gold in business, or ada mantine gates of society, comes to pro. nouncing it with acrimony or with scof or scorn and untrue aSpersion. We hear of this, and smiling refuse to believe it. "Oh, you must be mistaken" say we. "Why, she is my dear and trusted friend! l could not believe in treachery from that source unless her own tongue or pen confirmed it!' And then pitiless truth brings the proof we demand, and from the very tongue or pen of that man or woman, upon whose loyalty we would have staked our life, comes the copfrma- ton of all and more than all we had so confidently denied.
 And the more we have loved the l more cruel, the deeper and the more lasting is the blow. In fact. it is only | because of the love we have so lavished