HONEST ENEMIES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2447, 17 March 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

HONEST ENEMIES.

" Nr.vnit be afraid of a good honest enemy," says 1 Amber' in the Chicago Journal ; " cultivate one as old ladies cultivate cat-nip and thoroughwort. They may not be pleasant to have around,, but if your moral and mental digestion get cloyed with the sweets of (lattery, and you are in danger of falling into a fever from excess of injudicious adulation, a good, thorough-spoken enemy will prove a very efficient equaliser and a wholesome tonic. People who don't amount to anything never have enemies, any more than trees that don't fruit are stoned for apples. You never find bees buzzing around blossomless stalks ; it is only where the sweetest blossoms grow that they congregate with endless fret and (lurry. The fact thnt you have an enemy proves that you are alive. Nobody ever yet took the trouble to vide a-tilt against peaceful dreamers in a cemetery. Knemies are what hoes are to potato hills —they keep down the weeds. The cultivator, as it goes tearing between the corn-hillocks, brings all the useless weeds to grief, hut it sets the ■tassel of the corn atilt like an emerald plume. Our friends, sometimes, like the faithless Delilah, lull us into bad content, wherein we are despoiled of strength and the qualities that go to make up true manhood or womanhood, but, like the mosquito, our enemies are bound to keep us wide awake and active. Disease never came from a river that had a rocky channel and is forced to battle its way over discouraging and battling stones, but rivers that have no obstructions are apt to go by the name of ponds, and the very serenity of their stagnation breeds unwholesomeness. Give a young man a hard row in life, with plenty of discouragements, and good wholesome criticism, and lie wiil enter the port of middle age like a warship, staunch and full manned. Give him a luxurious career of petted idleness, with no enemy to keep the watch on the lookout, and lie will sail into port very iikelv from midsea a downward plunge to the bottom. Our friends are apt to be blind to our faults; our enemies never are. Through the constant (lattery of the former we grow in the wrong direction, as city aldermen do—about the girth. Under the sharp influence of honest criticism, we grow as pine trees do—straight toward heaven. Then let us cultivate, face to faec, honest enemies, and beware of the false security of friendship. The one will make a hero of you ; the other will turn you into the mould of a pint cup, unable to hold a full measurement of character development.