Amicus Redivivus”

"Amicus Redivivus" by Charles Battell Loomis is a whimsical and engaging narrative that explores themes of friendship, camaraderie, and the enduring connections between people. Through a blend of humor and insightful observations, Loomis weaves a tale that reminds readers of the importance of relationships in life's journey. The book often juxtaposes light-hearted moments with deeper reflections, making it both entertaining and thought-provoking. Its unique characters and charming storytelling invite readers to reflect on their own friendships and the ways in which they shape our lives.

• Short story

								
Josephus says, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” and it might well be
applied to the concerns of this day, for what one of us has not at
some time or other felt a “pactum illicitum,” a “qualis ab incepto,”
as it were, permeating his whole being, and bringing vividly before
the retina the transitory state of all things worldly? As Chaucer
said:

      For who so wolde senge the cattes skin,
      Than wol the cat wel dwellen in here in.

For it cannot be gainsaid that, despite the tendency toward
materialism, the cosmic rush and the spiritual captivity that lead so
many brave souls into the martyrdom of Achiacharus, there is in all
of us a certain quality that must and will assert itself.

It seems but yesterday that Shelley, in his poem on “Mutability,”
said:

      We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

but how pat is the application to-day! We are as clouds. You who
boast yourself of your ancestry, you whose dignity is as a cloak of
ermine, ye are but clouds. How well Goethe knew this! We all remember
those lambent lines of his--I cannot translate adequately, so I will
quote from the original German:

  Fräulein Anna, das Papier in Deutschland ist wie das Papier in
  Amerika.

Ages ago Sophocles had worded it in almost the same phrase:

        Oh, race of mortal men oppressed with care!
      What nothings are we, like to shadows vain,
        Cumb’ring the ground and wandering to and fro.

The greatest poets, from Le Gallienne down to Shakspere, have been
aware of this evanescent property in the cumbrous and exsufflicate
prowlers amid these “glimpses of the moon.” Well may we say with
Cæsar, “Quamdiu se bene gesserit.”

There is always a touch of ozone in the words of Horace, and we
find him saying of this very thing, “Precieuse ridicules pretiosa
supellex.” Could it have been said better? How airily he pricks the
bubble of man’s self-esteem! “Dressed in a little brief authority,”
man plays his part amid mundane happenings tremelloid and sejant,
and with a sort of innate connascence, a primitive conglutinate
efflorescence, he approaches nearer and nearer, day by day, to that
time when, as Shakspere hath it, “the beachy girdle of the ocean”
will resolve itself into its component parts, and man as man will
cease to exist.

But, to pass to a more inchoate view of these things,--to the “opum
furiata cupido” of the ancient Latins,--what is there in all this
that tends to lessen a man’s self-glorification, his auto-apotheosis?
Victor Hugo can tell us:

      Petit bourgeois père La Chaise
        Pour prendre congé tour de force
      Connaisseur tout Thérèse
        Façon de parler Edmund Gosse.

The author of “Les Misérables” was himself a man, and he knew. And
no less a man was Coplas de Manrique, and in his beautiful lyric,
“Caballeros,” he says:

      Tiene Vd.-Usted mi sombrero
        Tiene Vd.-Usted mi chaleco
      No lo tengo, no lo tengo
        Tiene Vd.-Usted mi.

“Noblesse oblige,” and it behooves all of us, however mighty our
positions in life, to unbend a little and try to mollify these
manducable and irresoluble phases of molecular existence, to the end
that we may accomplish a “vis medicatrix naturae” and a “vade mecum”
that shall be valuable to us in our journey to the tomb and through
nether space.

So, then, may we “with an unfaltering trust approach our grave,” and,
as Schiller says so musically:

  Ich kann nicht mit der linken Hand schreiben.
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