Chapter 39

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.”

“I will illustrate, Frank, The needy man is a train slipped off the rail. He who loans him money on interest is the one who, by way of accommodation, helps get the train back where it belongs; but then, by way of making all square, and a little more, telegraphs to an agent, thirty miles a-head by a precipice, to throw just there, on his account, a beam across the track. Your needy man’s principle-and-interest friend is, I say again, a friend with an enmity in reserve. No, no, my dear friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest.”

“Well, Charlie, none need you charge. Loan me without interest.”

“That would be alms again.”

“Alms, if the sum borrowed is returned?”

“Yes: an alms, not of the principle, but the interest.”

“Well, I am in sore need, so I will not decline the alms. Seeing that it is you, Charlie, gratefully will I accept the alms of the interest. No humiliation between friends.”

“Now, how in the refined view of friendship can you suffer yourself to talk so, my dear Frank. It pains me. For though I am not of the sour mind of Solomon, that, in the hour of need, a stranger is better than a brother; yet, I entirely agree with my sublime master, who, in his Essay on Friendship, says so nobly, that if he want a terrestrial convenience, not to his friend celestial (or friend social and intellectual) would he go; no: for his terrestrial convenience, to his friend terrestrial (or humbler business-friend) he goes. Very lucidly he adds the reason: Because, for the superior nature, which on no account can ever descend to do good, to be annoyed with requests to do it, when the inferior one, which by no instruction can ever rise above that capacity, stands always inclined to it—this is unsuitable.”

“Then I will not consider you as my friend celestial, but as the other.”

“It racks me to come to that; but, to oblige you, I’ll do it. We are business friends; business is business. You want to negotiate a loan. Very good. On what paper? Will you pay three per cent a month? Where is your security?”

“Surely, you will not exact those formalities from your old schoolmate—him with whom you have so often sauntered down the groves of Academe, discoursing of the beauty of virtue, and the grace that is in kindliness—and all for so paltry a sum. Security? Our being fellow-academics, and friends from childhood up, is security.”

“Pardon me, my dear Frank, our being fellow-academics is the worst of securities; while, our having been friends from childhood up is just no security at all. You forget we are now business friends.”

“And you, on your side, forget, Charlie, that as your business friend I can give you no security; my need being so sore that I cannot get an indorser.”

“No indorser, then, no business loan.”

“Since then, Charlie, neither as the one nor the other sort of friend you have defined, can I prevail with you; how if, combining the two, I sue as both?”