The Cheyenne Daily Leader

That Friend of Your Youth.

Next to the lynx eyed younger brother with his terrible memory and his great cloqu ence the friend of her youth is the being whom every woman wishes most to avoid. The friend of one's youth remembers and recalls in public all one's early follies. She asks if you have forgotten the day you ran away from school, the afternoon you were whipped for playing with the boys around the corner, the day you painted your face with the artificial roses on your mother's bonnet and the night you demolished a whole jar of jam at a sitting. She literally does this when the minister is calling or when your prospective mother-in-law is eagerly drinking in the story of your youthful crime.

Then the friend of your youth goes on and enumerates forgotten love affairs, recalls your successive flirtations and enjoys to the listeners the impression that you were a very gay person indeed. She feels free because of her position to criticize your clothes, your manner, your fiance and your looks. For the same reason she considers herself at liberty to borrow any of your possessions, from a handkerchief to the contents of your purse. And when she has done all these things she sits down and sentimentalizes about the past and makes you cry that such halcyon days will never again.-New York World.