“The Fire”
FRIENDSHIP
What a precious flower friendship is. Without it, even the strongest man could not live long. The heart needs a kindred, familiar heart, like a little clearing in the forest, a place to rest and lie down and chat. We can never value our friend highly enough, if he is a true friend, and can never run away fast enough if he betrays our friendship. O, there are false friends, whose only goal in life is to wound, to hurt, to destroy! There are people who zealously strive to seem to be our friends, only so that they can injure and damage us all the more thoughtlessly and deeply. I don’t actually know any friends like that, but I have read about them in books, and what it says in them must be true since it is written in such a clear and heartfelt way. I have one friend, I would rather not say his name. It is enough that I am certain of him as mine, completely mine. Where is the happiness, the calm, the enjoyment that can compare to this? I don’t know of any. Any such calm I mean. My friend is surely thinking of me during this hour of class, as surely as I am thinking of him and mentioning him. In his essay I am playing the leading role as much as he, the good fellow, is playing the leading role here in mine. Oh, such clear communication, such a firm bond, such mutual understanding! I cannot begin to understand it, but I let it happen all the more calmly since it is good and I like it. My unpracticed pen cannot express how good it is, how much I like it. There are many varieties of friendship, just as there are many varieties of betrayal. You should not confuse one with another. You should think it over. There are some who want to cheat and deceive us, but they can’t, and others who want to stay true to us for all eternity but they have to betray us, half consciously, half against their will. Still others betray us just to show us that we were deceived when we thought they were our friends. I like that kind of enemy. They teach us something and leave us with nothing to trouble us except the disappointment. Still, that is very troubling! Who would not want a friend he could both love and admire! Both — love and admiration — are indispensable feelings for true friendship. You can love a toy without admiring it. In fact you can even love things you despise. But you cannot love and at the same time have a low opinion of a friend. It’s impossible, at least that’s how it seems to me. Mutual respect is the only soil in which such a tender plant can grow. I would rather be hated than despised, and rather not be loved than be loved the way you are when someone despises you at the same time. Nothing offends a noble creature more than contempt. A noble creature has only other noble creatures as friends, and noble friends tell you when they can no longer respect you. Thus true friendship is a school for fine and beautiful character. And to practice such behavior is a pleasure greater than ten other pleasures, even a hundred. Oh, I am all too aware of the sweet delights of noble friendship. One more thing: Funny, silly people have a hard time making friends. People don’t trust them. And if they mock and criticize, they don’t deserve to be trusted either.
POVERTY
Someone is poor when he comes to school in a torn jacket. Who would deny that? We have several poor boys in our class. They wear tattered clothes, their hands freeze, they have dirty faces that are not beautiful and unclean behavior. The teacher treats them more roughly than us, and he is right to. Teachers know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t want to be poor, I’d be ashamed to death. Why is being poor such a disgrace? I don’t know. My parents are well off. Papa has a carriage and horses. He couldn’t have them if he was poor. I see poor, ragged women on the street all the time and I feel sorry for them. Poor men, on the other hand, produce a kind of indignation in me. Poverty and dirt doesn’t look good on men and I have no sympathy for a poor man. I have a kind of special liking for poor women. They can ask for money so beautifully. Men who beg are ugly and ashamed and so it’s right to loathe them. There is nothing uglier than begging. Every kind of begging is a sign of an unreliable, unproud, yes even dishonest character. I would rather die on the spot than open my mouth to make an improper request. There are some requests that are prouder and more beautiful than anything in the world: asking someone you love for forgiveness after you have offended them. For example: your mother. Admitting your mistake and making up for it with humble, modest behavior could not be farther from contemptible, in fact it is necessary. To beg for bread or for help is bad. Why do there have to be poor people with nothing to eat? I think for someone to approach his fellow man for food or clothing is not dignified. Being needy is as horrible as it is contemptible. My teacher laughs at my essays, and when he reads this one he will laugh twice as hard. So what! To be poor? Does that mean not to own anything? Yes, and property is necessary for life, just like breathing for running. If you run out of breath you fall down on the street and other people have to run to help you! There is one good thing about poverty, I’ve read in books, that it awakens charity in the minds of the rich. But I say, since after all I have a voice of my own and this is my essay, that it only makes them hard and cruel. The consciousness in the hearts of the rich people who see other people suffering and know that it is in their power to improve their situations makes them arrogant. My father is gentle and kind, cheerful and just, but to poor people he is hard and snappy and not at all gentle. He screams at them and you can tell that they irritate and annoy him. He talks about them with disgust and with hate mixed in. No, poverty has no good consequences. It makes most people sad and unfriendly. So I don’t like the poor boys in our class, because I can tell that they envy my nice clothes and are happy to see me do anything wrong in class. They could never be my friends. I don’t feel anything for them, because I pity them. I don’t respect them, because they see me as an enemy for no reason. And if they do have a reason — well, unfortunately time’s up.