A WELL-KNOWN physician killed himself in a thriving little western city the other night. He had been drinking late with a party of friends, the despatches say, and when the friends went home he took a pistol out of his desk and shot himself through the heart. He left a note saying: "I've tried to stop this whisky business, but it's no use; a man can't be a good fellow and ride the water wagon, and I'd rather be dead than to disappoint my friends. Good-by."
Now that man was young and handsome; he had money, and he had a beautiful young wife and a pleasant home. But he left all these things and sank into a suicide's grave rather than to disappoint some one or some collection of some ones whom he was pleased to call, poor fool, his friends.
I know a woman whose husband is serving a term in the penitentiary to-day because she was determined not to disappoint her friends. The other day a college girl killed herself to escape from the small debts she had brought upon herself rather than be behindhand in entertaining her friends.
Friends! I wonder if the man who lies dying in a sun-beaten field calls the vultures who swoop above him his friends. Friends! Why, I wouldn't give one look from a pair of devoted eyes that shine in a certain wrinkled old black face I know for all the endearments that such friends could lavish upon me in a million years. What is a friend, anyhow? A friend is a man or woman who loves you for what you are, not for what can be bled out of you, but for your real self. He knows your faults, and maybe he doesn't like them, either; but he likes you in spite of the faults; and when he sees you making a fool of yourself he'll tell you of it in good, plain English.
The world is full of friends, real friends, friends who will stand by you through thick and thin, friends who love you and forgive you and look at the best side of you. Friends who remember you when you are dead and gone and your children need some one to give them a little boost in the world. Friends who don't care the rattle of an old tin can whether you are rich or handsome or successful or not.
How shall a man get real friends? There is just one way—he must be a real friend himself. The little varnish of good manners we put on over our selfishness doesn't deceive anybody in the world. The stupidest man and the most unwordly woman knows right down in the heart's depths how much you really mean and how much is mere pretense.
When you like a man, tell him so, and tell everybody else so, too. If you think a woman is good and honest-hearted, don't miss a chance to let her see that you think so. Why, one real smile, the kind of smile that means honest appreciation, will win you the most priceless thing on earth—a real friend—when all the flattery and flubdub on earth won't do a thing for you.
Here's to friends, real friends, true friends, the friends that will laugh at you to your face if you've got to be laughed at for your own good, and fight for you behind your back.—Winifred Black.