The Writing On the Ground

THE WRITING ON THE GROUND. Surely anything short of Honesty in Love and Friendship is intolerable—and unthinkable—un- forgivable. Dishonesty in business and politics we are, alas, used to by daily association, but the meanest money- grabber has some respect for Friendship. Yet we have all recently been shocked by a striking and terrible example of the lowest depths ever reached by any human being in meanness and disloyalty to afriend; that friend unable to defend himself, gone beyond these petty strifes and falsehoods. We are left to resent it for him—we are worth nothing if we do not make our resentment felt and that strongly. This false friend, this despicable creature, does not stop at mere lies and slander—he hires a jackal, a low lackey, to help him in his ghoulish task of desecrating the dead. That pamphlet* which shocked and disgusted us all was written for his filthy money. The penny-a-liner prostitute who wrote it has only our contempt—even blackmailers sometimes starve. It isof his master I must speak. This crawling creature (would we could hope him to be mere victim of Religious mania!) i vilifying his dead friend, seeking to right himself with Heaven.— Oh, fears of Hell and hopes of Paradise!” It has its grimly humorous aspect. * “The First Stone,”’ by T. W. H. Crosland. 3