 | The fiend's delight |  |
Your Friend's Friend.
If there is any individual who combines within
himself the vices of an entire species it is he. A
satisfactory specimen of total depravity; it has
been customary to regard your sweetheart's brother
as tolerably vicious for a young man; there is
excellent authority for looking upon your business
partner as not wholly without merit as a nuisance—
but your friend's friend is as far ahead of these
in all that constitutes a healthy disagreeableness as
they themselves are in advance of the average
reptile or the conventional pestilence.
We do not propose to illustrate the great truth
we have in hand by instances; the experience of the
reader will furnish ample evidence in support of our
proposition, and any narration of pertinent facts
could only quicken into life the dead ghosts of a
thousand sheeted annoyances to squeak and gibber
through a memory studded thick with the tombstones
of happy hours murdered by your friend's
friend.
Also, the animal is too well known to need a
description. Imagine a thing in all essential particulars
the exact reverse of a desirable acquaintance,
and you have his mental photograph. How your
friend could ever admire so hopeless and unendurable
a bore is a problem you are ever seeking to
solve. Perhaps you may be assisted in it by a
previous solution of the kindred problem—how he
could ever feel affection for yourself? Perhaps
question. Perhaps from his point of view you are
your friend's friend.
| The fiend's delight | |