Happy Birthday calamitycrow!

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Wishing a very, very

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to the inordinately talented, warm-hearted, and generous calamitycrow! It is such a pleasure to know you, bb--have a fabulous day!

There's a present in the works, but until then, and in honor of her amazing nineteenth-century AUs, "The West that Never Was," there's an eighteenth-century hymn to friendship behind the cut:


Friendship to ev’ry willing mind

Opens a heav’nly treasure:

There may the sons of sorrow find

Sources of real pleasure.

See what employments men pursue,

Then you will own my words are true:

Friendship alone presents to view

Sources of real pleasure.

Poor are the joys that fools esteem,

Fading and transitory;

Mirth is as fleeting as a dream,

Or a delusive story;

Luxury leaves a sting behind,

Wounding the body and the mind;

Only in Friendship can we find

Pleasure and solid glory.

Beauty, with all its gaudy shows,

Is but a painted bubble;

Short is the triumph wit bestows,

Full of deceit and trouble;

Fame like a shadow flees away,

Titles and dignities decay;

Nothing but Friendship can display

Joys that are free from trouble.

Learning (that boasted glitt’ring thing)

Scarcely is worth possessing;

Riches, forever on the wing,

Cannot be called a blessing;

Sensual pleasures swell desire,

Just as the fuel feeds the fire;

Friendship can real bliss inspire:

Bliss that is worth possessing.

Happy the man who has a friend

Form’d by the God of nature;

Well may he feel and recommend

Friendship for his Creator:

Then let our hearts in Friendship join,

So let our social pow’rs combine,

Rul’d by a passion most divine:

Friendship with our Creator.

by Bidwell, from the American Musical Miscellany , 1798