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.
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