Philology is about the only thread which connects us with the prehistoric past.  By picking up and piecing out the scattered remnants of language, we form a patchwork of wondrous design.  Oblige us by considering the derivation of the word “sarcophagus,” and see if it be not suggestive of potted meats.  Observe the significance of the phrase “sweet sixteen.”  What a world of meaning lurks in the expression “she is sweet as a peach,” and how suggestive of luncheon are the words “tender youth.”  A kiss itself is but a modified bite, and when a young girl insists upon making a “strawberry mark” upon the back of your hand, she only gives way to an instinct she has not yet learned to control.  The fond mother, when she says her babe is almost “good enough to eat,” merely shows that she herself is only a trifle too good to eat it.

These evidences might be multiplied ad infinitum; but if enough has been said to induce one human being to revert to the diet of his ancestors, the object of this essay is accomplished.  Your Friend’s Friend.

If there is any individual who combines within himself the vices of an entire species it is he.  A mother-in-law has usually been thought a rather satisfactory specimen of total depravity; it has been customary to regard your sweetheart’s brother as tolerably vicious for a young man; there is excellent authority for looking upon your business partner as not wholly without merit as a nuisance-but your friend’s friend is as far ahead of these in all that constitutes a healthy disagreeableness as they themselves are in advance of the average reptile or the conventional pestilence.

We do not propose to illustrate the great truth we have in hand by instances; the experience of the reader will furnish ample evidence in support of our proposition, and any narration of pertinent facts could only quicken into life the dead ghosts of a thousand sheeted annoyances to squeak and gibber through a memory studded thick with the tombstones of happy hours murdered by your friend’s friend.

Also, the animal is too well known to need a description.  Imagine a thing in all essential particulars the exact reverse of a desirable acquaintance, and you have his mental photograph.  How your friend could ever admire so hopeless and unendurable a bore is a problem you are ever seeking to solve.  Perhaps you may be assisted in it by a previous solution of the kindred problem-how he could ever feel affection for yourself?  Perhaps your friend’s friend is equally exercised over that question.  Perhaps from his point of view you are your friend’s friend.  Le Diable est aux Vaches.