---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 5
number: 2
published: 1901-12
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "True to His Old Friend," *Improvement Era* 5, no. 2 (December 1901): 105.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0502unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0502unse
start_page: 105
end_page: 105
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-12)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0502unse
  publication_year: 1901
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# True to His Old Friend

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Ttuc to His Old Friend.
An old man was leading a thin old horse across the commons
in the northern part of the city, when a passer-by asked him where
he was going.
'I'm searching for a bit of green for the poor beast," he an-
swered.
*Td send him to the bone-yard or the glue factory," said the
other contemptuously.
"Would you?" asked the old man in a trembling voice, "if he
had been the best friehd you had in the world and helped you to
earn food for your family for nearly twenty-five years? If the

children that's gone and the children that's livin' had played with
their arms around his neck and their heads on him for a pillow,
when they had no other? Sir, he's carried us to mill and to meet-
in', an' please God he shall die like a Christian, an' I'll bury him

with these old hands. Nobody'll ever abuse old 'Bill, for if I go
afore him there are those who will look after him."
"I beg your pardon," said the man who had accosted him,
"there's a difference in people."