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- CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE HYPOTHETICAL FRIENDS.
"Charlie, I am going to put confidence in you."
"You always have, and with reason. What is it Frank?"
"Charlie, I am in want--urgent want of money."
"That's not well."
"But it _will_ be well, Charlie, if you loan me a hundred dollars. I
would not ask this of you, only my need is sore, and you and I have so
long shared hearts and minds together, however unequally on my side,
that nothing remains to prove our friendship than, with the same
inequality on my side, to share purses. You will do me the favor won't
you?"
"Favor? What do you mean by asking me to do you a favor?"
"Why, Charlie, you never used to talk so."
"Because, Frank, you on your side, never used to talk so."
"But won't you loan me the money?"
"No, Frank."
"Why?"
"Because my rule forbids. I give away money, but never loan it; and of
course the man who calls himself my friend is above receiving alms. The
negotiation of a loan is a business transaction. And I will transact no
business with a friend. What a friend is, he is socially and
intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual friendship too high
to degrade it on either side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure
there are, and I have, what is called business friends; that is,
commercial acquaintances, very convenient persons. But I draw a red-ink
line between them and my friends in the true sense--my friends social
and intellectual. In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with loans;
he should have a soul above loans. Loans are such unfriendly
accommodations as are to be had from the soulless corporation of a bank,
by giving the regular security and paying the regular discount."
"An _unfriendly_ accommodation? Do those words go together handsomely?"
"Like the poor farmer's team, of an old man and a cow--not handsomely,
but to the purpose. Look, Frank, a loan of money on interest is a sale
of money on credit. To sell a thing on credit may be an accommodation,
but where is the friendliness? Few men in their senses, except
operators, borrow money on interest, except upon a necessity akin to
starvation. Well, now, where is the friendliness of my letting a
starving man have, say, the money's worth of a barrel of flour upon the
condition that, on a given day, he shall let me have the money's worth
of a barrel and a half of flour; especially if I add this further
proviso, that if he fail so to do, I shall then, to secure to myself
the money's worth of my barrel and his half barrel, put his heart up at
public auction, and, as it is cruel to part families, throw in his
wife's and children's?"
"I understand," with a pathetic shudder; "but even did it come to that,
such a step on the creditor's part, let us, for the honor of human
nature, hope, were less the intention than the contingency."
"But, Frank, a contingency not unprovided for in the taking beforehand
of due securities."
"Still, Charlie, was not the loan in the first place a friend's act?"
"And the auction in the last place an enemy's act. Don't you see? The
enmity lies couched in the friendship, just as the ruin in the relief."
"I must be very stupid to-day, Charlie, but really, I can't understand
this. Excuse me, my dear friend, but it strikes me that in going into
the philosophy of the subject, you go somewhat out of your depth."
"So said the incautious wader out to the ocean; but the ocean replied:
'It is just the other way, my wet friend,' and drowned him."
"That, Charlie, is a fable about as unjust to the ocean, as some of
Æsop's are to the animals. The ocean is a magnanimous element, and would
scorn to assassinate a poor fellow, let alone taunting him in the act.
But I don't understand what you say about enmity couched in friendship,
and ruin in relief."
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