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Title: Friend and Foe Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: August, 1887 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1, No. 11, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3006, retrieved on April 12, 2020.
A man condemned to lifelong imprisonment had escaped from his
confinement and was seeking safety in headlong flight. His pursuers were
close at his heels. He was running with all his might, and the distance
between him and them was becoming steadily greater.
Suddenly he sees before him a stream with precipitous banks, a narrow
but deep torrent, . . . . and he cannot swim.
But the stream is bridged by a thin plank, half-rotten with age. The
fugitive has already one foot upon it. And there, by chance, stand his
dearest friend and his bitterest foe.
The enemy uttered no sound, and merely folded his arms. The friend, on
the contrary, cried out at the top of his voice:
"For God's sake, consider, foolhardy man, what you are doing! Do you not
see that the plank is quite rotten? It will give way under your weight,
and you will inevitably be lost."
"But there is no other way," groaned the despairing fugitive, "and my
pursuers–listen, they are close at hand." And he stepped forward to
cross the plank.
"I cannot permit it. No, I cannot allow you thus to step to your
destruction," cried the zealous friend, and even from beneath the feet
of the fugitive he tore the plank away.
The fugitive, in despair, plunged into the rushing torrent and was
drowned.
The foe smiled with a bitter satisfaction, and passed on his way. But
the friend sat down sadly by the bank, and bewailed the loss of his
dearest friend. It never entered his head for a moment to consider
himself to blame for the death.
"He would not heed me; he would not heed me," he cried in his great
sorrow.
"After all," he presently thought, "he must have passed his whole life
in a horrible dungeon. At least he is delivered from all his troubles.
He is now better off, and it is clear that an all-wise providence had so
intended it. And yet, from a merely human point of view, what a pity it
is."
And so the pious soul continued, weeping hot tears over his unfortunate
friend.