Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1909 — THE MAN OF FALLEN FORTUNES [ARTICLE]

THE MAN OF FALLEN FORTUNES

His Opinion of His Fellow Man as Deduced From Hard Experience. “Losing one’s money,’? said the man of fallen fortunes, “is not without its compensating comforts; for Instance, in the discovery of one’s real friends. “When ! was rich I never knew for sure whether a man, being rich, was drawn to me because I was rich also or whether, being poor, he was drawn to me because he thought I could help him; but it was easy to tell after I had lost my money. “The proudest gratification that I got then I found in the loyalty of my family. One and all they stood by me with a gentle sympathy and unfaltering devotion that has continued to the present inoment and that I JknQw_,JdlL.never fall —my strongest and most encouraging support. “And then I began to make discoveries about my friends, to discover which were fair weather friends, which were friends only when I could help them and which were friends through thick and thin; and I found friendliness to exist as a bedrock enduring Quality in rich and poor alike. “There is this to be.said about the rich man and his money. When a man has made money he hates to give it up. But I have known rich men who proved themselves stalwart staying friends indeed; who gave though the chances of the money ever coming back to them—if they thought of that at all —must have seemed very slim; men who gave with a prompt readiness that took all the sting out of the necessity of asking with a willingness that was of itself most helpful and cheering. “And then while I have had men drum me for small debts which I was able to pay off only very slowly I have had men to whom I owed bigger debts say to me —and this out of sheer kindliness and friendliness to me—to take away from me a burden; Forget it, old man; don’t ■worry yourself over that. We’ll just simply cross that off the books and call it square.’ And—and this is not the least of the things that have solaced me—there are men, rich men and men not rich, with whom my relations in another day were friendly, who have treated me always ever since personally just the same, with absolutely unbroken kindness and consideration. “So my misfortune has revealed to me friends whose real friendliness I might otherwise not have known and the world seems kinder to me than it did before. We must all look out for ourselves; self-preservation is the first law of nature, but still the fact remains that the run of men are a pretty good lot, ready to help others. k “It remains only for a man to help himself; and by all this kindness to me, emboldened anew, I am, I confide to you, and with prospects most cheering, now making another try at fortune. ”r—New York Sun.