printed tissue guard copy: “It is a great thing to have friends”

Essay: Friends

“IT IS a great thing to have friends; to have your horses, and your dogs and even the old tabby-cat like you. Some of the best friends we have in the world are those companions that greet us with a merry bark or caress us with a kindly purr. When your dog looks up into your eyes and wags his tail of welcome, you have a sure-enough handshake. When you go out to the barn in the morning, and your horse neighs and rubs his soft nose against you as you put in the oats, you know that there is no diplomacy or pretense in that old horse’s head. We don’t meet many such friends in this world, and a feller doesn’t mind putting in an extra allowance of oats even if they are high.
It is a pretty lonesome sort of a world without friends-a trackless, treeless sort of a journey that parches and shrivels up the heart.
Some men have to die before they make friends, but it is better to have a few, just a few, while we are here than to have so many after we are gone. It is better to have a single little flower to cheer us in life than to have our friends send bouquets afterward when all their sweetness is so soured by sorrow.
But ’tis a strange flower, this flower of friendship, and it blossoms in some of the most out-of-the-way places-on the farm, where there is peace and quiet and time for the heart to grow as well as other things, and in the mill, where the wheels whirl and men are full of soot and bent with labor.
But wherever you come across it, pluck it, and hold it close to your heart-it will blossom and lend its sweetness to your life and brighten the way.
And as there are close and intimate and personal friendships, so there are other friendships, business friendships, that we must make. It is not too much to say that the Trust Company can sometimes be the best friend that a man has in the world, because it undertakes the most sacred duty-that of caring for the interests of those we leave behind. And just as we want to make strong, true and dependable friendships among men, so we need make the same sort of friendships among institutions where we expect to deputize them to act for us in such important matters.
And it follows that strong men make strong institutions, and it is logical to make our business friendships with the same thought and care as we do our personal friendships.”