Suppose you have a friend named Brown whom you have known many years and have a good deal of affection for. An unexpected opportunity offers for you to get a week's hunting in the South and you think how fine it would be, if you can get the right sort of companion to share it with you. You see Brown, tell him about it, invite him and he accepts. You immediately start in making plans and arrangements--dogs, guns, food, drinks--leaving nothing undone to make it a bang-up affair and give Brown and yourself the time of your lives. Now suppose when you have fixed up everything and are waiting in joyful anticipation for the hour to arrive, you receive word from Brown, with apologies and a lame excuse, that he must deprive himself of the pleasure of going with you? And suppose you discover later, in an accidental way, that the real reason Brown left you flat was because something else turned up that appealed to him more and he was thinking only of himself? Suppose, now, you are a society lady, or a society man, and you have accepted an invitation from a woman friend to motor out to her country place and dine and spend the night--and suppose when the day arrives, you are offered a box at the opera, that night, to hear Caruso? As this appeals to you much more than the other, you send a wire to the country at the last minute, pretending an indisposition, and go to the opera. What of the woman friend--who had made special efforts and invited certain people on your account, and had counted on you as a main consideration in her whole affair? Your absence upsets her completely, spoils her party, and robs her of something on which she had spent a good deal of time and effort and on which her heart was set. If she ever discovers or suspects the true reason for your desertion, you will have inflicted a wound in her feelings that few friendships can survive and the loss of a friend in this world is hardly to be regarded as a trifling matter.