I have often heard people lament ill-health because, they say, sickness
loses to a man friends. On the contrary, I hold that it brings him
many new and unexpected ones. Let me see--December 15,--July; seven
months; that was long enough to make the experiment, wasn't it? Well,
let me look over some of the new friends I have made lying all this
time in bed. The first new friend that I made, and one who had evidently
seen better days, was a Tomato Can, that ever present denizen of the
back-yard. On his head he jauntily flew a cocked hat bearing a damaged
new picture of himself evidently taken in youth, and across his red
waistcoat, in blue letters, was the word "Trophy." There he stood, day
after day, leaning jauntily against the doubtful company of a whiskey
barrel hoop, telling me the time of day, as if that was his only
business in life. If the sun's light lay across his red stomach it was
9 o'clock, if it glistened on his cocked hat it was noon, and if it
soberly lighted up the cherry red tomato on his side, it was 6 o'clock.
"Sir," he seemed to say, "I have not been always as you see me. I have
seen the day when I roosted on the highest shelf in the family grocery,
and when I was dusted daily by well dressed clerks--if the employer
was around. I was for many years the tenant of a French plate glass
window and I have been carried by the soft hand of Beauty, sir, and
laid gently in the market-basket. I do not boast, but Beauty itself
has carried me through the streets in its arm. I have seen great larks,
sir. I have travelled that Main Street at the rate of a mile a minute
at the tail of valuable dogs, and at the midnight hour I have bounced
into the midst of cat caucuses with great sport. I have been the friend
of Man, sir, but what has Man done for me. He has left me here in this
miserable back-yard, company of barrel-hoops and brick-bats and bottles.
He has--" But here the next door neighbor's servant threw a bucket of
slop-water on my friend and cut off his complaint. His red vest peeled