Antonoff endures the
torture, but no agony can make him prove false to his friends. When his
captors give him a respite from the thumbscrews and the red-hot wires
that are thrust under his nails, he forgets his own torment, and
scratches on his plate his cipher signals to his comrades. Those men and
women in that awful country are lawless and dangerous, but they are
heroic, and they are true friends one to another.
How far we proud islanders must have forsaken for a time the road to
nobleness when we are able to exalt the saying "A full purse is the only
true friend" into a representative English proverb! We do not rage and
foam as Timon did--that would be ill-bred and ludicrous; we simply smile
and utter delicate mockeries. In the plays that best please our golden
youth nothing is so certain to win applause and laughter as a sentence
about the treachery or greed of friends. Do those grinning,
superlatively insolent cynics really represent the mighty Mother of
Nations? Ah, no! If even the worst of them were thrust away into some
region where life was hard for him, he would show something like
nobility and manliness; it is the mephitic airs of ease and luxury that
breed selfishness and scorn in his soul.
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