Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1935-08-24
Friendship Is
Assured by
One Method
P a h e tic Complaint
Comes From Those
Who Are Lonely.
BY ANGELO PATRI.
PATHETIC note reached me re-

A PATHETIC note reached me re-
"a Gently. I get that note many.
many times, written on various kinds
of paper, in all sorts Of penmanship,
signed with different names, but al
ways the same pathetic note. Why
don't people like me? Why am not
popular? Sometimes an anxious
mother writes the note Her daughter
or son has no friends. What can be
done about it?
Everybody needs friends, no doubt
about that. A person who is isolated,
left out and forgotten, is in a bad
way. But there Is just one recipe for
friendship and that is: Be friend.
1t works every time. Anybody can
be friendly unless he is ailing in mind
or body, and even then I have known
invalid men and women and children
to have many friends. Just be friendly.
find between the lines of these
notes q few of the reasons for this
friendleSs condition. Self1shness Is
the first. A girl wants to be first in
everything. She admits that she is
the best all-around student, athlete,
dancer, but the rest Of the girls hate
her for 1t and leave her out. Nobody
likes to be overshadowed by greatness
like that. The air about such per-
son is too rarified for ordinary folk
1t will have to be changed with COM
mon average ability before II can be
friendly. Giants must remain aloof.
II you feel yourself giant, winner,
a hundred percenter, be content with
that, for you will have no friends.
Humanity is ordinary, little Of this
and a dash of that, perfect nowhere.
II always get left. At home my
brothers and sisters always get the
best Of things. In school. the teacher
always passes me up and gives the
medal to some fellow who needs it
when she knows it is mine by rights.
The fellows never let me be captain.
They pass me up and make some
body who doesn't know his knees from
his elbows the captain. Then they
expect me to run my fool head off,
And don't. What I want is a square
deal"
You are getting 1t, son. You are
getting it. You give nothing and you
get nothing. Isn't that square enough?
What you want is to give nothing and
get all, and that is not the way things
work out. You give lot and you get
back a little. And if you learn to
cfoy, no,,pfipo ord ~ "a c,Yr;,o what wa,
give you will find yourself drowned in
the generosity Of your friends. That
Is the way things work out. Grudging
gets you nowhere.
I don't know just what shape life
comes in. I do not believe it is square.
I think it is a most irregular affair, a
cloud of shining star dust that. If you
try to clutch it, evades you and leaves
you with dust in your eyes and an itch
IN your palms. think it is some sort
Of intangible thing that, if accepted
without questioning, wraps you In
light and carries you to enchanted
places where you live happily with
the crowd of friends and neighbors
who accepted things the same as you
did. IT does strange things to you, as
star dust must, but you keep on trust
ing and living and doing and find it
does very we'll.
About being popular. Just be
friendly, trust, live, go along with the
others, knowing you have much in
common with them, and you won't
be thinking about being popular at all.
You'll be "in" instead of out"
(Copyright. 1889