Man Friday

“ Why?”
“Because I allowed the Durande to return on Fridays.”
M. Jaquemin Hérode whispered in Caudray’s ear:
“This man is superstitious.”
He resumed, raising his voice, and in a didactic tone:
“Mess Lethierry, it is puerile to believe in Fridays. You ought not to put faith in fables. Friday is a day just like any other. It is very often a propitious day. ”

“ Good Friday is a day of mourning and penance, for on that day sin caused the death of the Incarnate Son of God. On the sixth day of Creation God made man; and on the sixth day of the week, God Incarnate redeemed fallen man.
A summary of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sufferings of our Blessed Lord were caused by men, Jews, Gentiles and even His own apostles (Peter and Judas) ; by the light which revealed His nakedness; and by the air which inflamed His wounds. ”

“ The stern duty of Friday morning always haunted me in anticipation, for I have never been able to take lightly the work I do with so much difficulty, and Friday morning itself often brought even J. up with a sharp turn to face the fact that man was born into the world to labour in the sweat of his brow, and not simply to talk all night until no work was left in him.
That may have been one reason for our giving up so agreeable a custom. Another perhaps came from the discovery that the freedom of our Thursday nights was sometimes abused. ”

“ Is it any wonder, then, that the world thinks her extravagant in both directions at once; that the world turns away on Good Friday from the unutterable depths of her sorrow, and on Easter Day from the unscalable heights of her joy, calling the one morbid and the other hysterical? ”

“ We are not in the place of those blessed women; God has not put us in their place, and we cannot put ourselves into their place; and if we could and did, by any imaginations of our own, we should only tell ourselves a lie. Good Friday was to them indeed a day of darkness, horror, disappointment, all but despair; because Easter Day had not yet come, and Christ had not yet risen. But Good Friday cannot be a day of darkness to us, because Christ has risen, and we know it, and cannot forget it; we cannot forget that Easter dawn, when the Sun of Righteousness arose, never to set again. ”

“ Friday. Yes, my nation eat mans too; eat all up.
Master. Where do they carry them?
Friday. Go to other place, where they think.
Master. Do they come hither?
Friday. Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else place.
Master. Have you been here with them?
Friday. Yes, I been here. (Points to the N.W. side of the island, which, it seems, was their side.)
By this I understood that my man Friday had formerly been among the savages who used to come on shore on the farther part of the island, on the same man-eating occasions that he was now brought for ”

“ Friday is the sailor's pet aversion, as an unlucky day on which to sail or begin work. But this is not surprising, when we remember that Friday has everywhere more superstition and folk-lore attached to it than any other day in the week, originating, perhaps, as Mr. Thiselton-Dyer suggests, from the fact that it was the day on which Christ was crucified. Lord Byron had the superstitious aversion to Friday; and even among the Brahmins no business must be commenced on this day. In Lancashire a man will not 'go a-courting on Friday' ”

“ As if the affairs of Europe were going to be arranged by Providence according to whether you and I start for an excursion on a Thursday or a Friday!”
He said he was surprised that a man who could be so sensible, occasionally, as myself, could have patience to even think of such old-womanish nonsense. He said that years ago, when he was a silly boy, he used to pay attention to this foolish superstition himself, and would never upon any consideration start for a trip upon a Friday. ”

“ We had now reached, for good or evil, the final fulfilment of that gathering influence which began to grow on us in the seventeenth century, which was solidified by the military alliances of the eighteenth century, and which in the nineteenth century had been turned into a philosophy—not to say a mythology. German metaphysics had thinned our theology, so that many a man's most solemn conviction about Good Friday was that Friday was named after Freya. ”

“ None of us knows how nigh is the evening. We may be near the final hour, both you and I, even though our hair as yet has no silver tinge. And if we, with this possibility in view, review the march of events in our own lives, we see much which we would like to change—if we but could. How often have not the powers of evil been victorious in our lives, as they were on that Good Friday! ”

“ Does Friday night come after twenty-four hours of that day are spent? You see how difficult God makes the way of transgressors. You may reply that you made a mistake. Will you allow me to tell you where your mistake commenced on this subject. If I am not very much mistaken it was when you gave up keeping the true seventh day, the only historical, chronological or biblical day of the week ever given to man. ”

“ Wednesday is to be fasted, because then the Jews conspired to betray Jesus; Friday, because he then suffered for us. We keep the Lord’s Day as a day of joy, because then our Lord rose. Our tradition is, not to kneel on that day. ”

“ It's Friday. Why?" He replied, "Because it is so still. Did you ever see a place where people live that is so completely silent?" "It reminds me of London on Good Friday—everybody gone to church," said another.
We drove on. A block along the main street a soldier in the French uniform of the line lounged in a doorway. His long blue overcoat flapped desolately over his baggy red trousers. His rifle leaned in the corner. We asked if any hotel remained open. He replied, "I don't know. Have you a cigarette?" I drew out a box and he ran to the car, seizing it as a hungry animal snatches food. ”

“ In short, my mind being strongly fixed upon my design of going over with him to the Continent, I very plainly told him that we would both go and make a boat full as big, and more proportionable than that, wherein he might safely return to his own nation.
These words made Friday look so very pensive that I thought he would have fallen at my feet. It was some time before he could speak a word, which made me ask him, what was the matter with him? He replied in a very soft and moving tone, What has poor Friday done? why are you angry mad with poor servant? ”

“ One of my gravest superstitions concerns Fridays. I was born on a Friday, and ever since I was old enough to know anything at all I've regarded Friday as especially momentous. And you'd be surprised if I told you how many important things have befallen me on Friday. ”

“ Thursday I regard as one who ploughs steadily on his way, lacking enthusiasm but comfortably conscious of a second wind; Friday is a debilitated but hopeful toiler, whose sole joy in his work lies in anticipating its speedy conclusion ”

“ It is the most solemn and binding of all Fridays and should be observed as an absolute Fast in token of our sorrow for sin, and in preparation for the Easter Communion. All unnecessary work, all social engagements and pleasures are especially to be avoided by all those who reverence their Lord, and remember of what Good Friday is the solemn memorial. It is a day of Church-going, and it will be found that the Good Friday services are very {125} impressive, solemn and soul-stirring. The Proper Psalms are the 22d, 40th and 54th in Morning Prayer, and the 69th and 88th for Evening Prayer. ”

“ Friday is so 'loving and giving,' I was sure nothing would please her like a knot of true-blue ribbon, and a box of sugar-plums to share with you all; while, as Saturday has to 'work hard for a living,' I shall give him his present in money, to spend as he likes."
"But have you nothing for Sunday?" asked the children.
"To be sure I have," cried Grandpa Week, catching the little boy in his arms and fastening a glittering belt about his waist.
"'The child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is blithe and bonny and good and gay;'
"and Sunday is the golden clasp that binds the Weeks together." ”

“ And let us remember this, that whenever we fancy ourselves to be strong and powerful, and think to aggrandize ourselves at our neighbour’s expense, and to crush those who are weaker than ourselves, then we are forgetting the lesson of Good Friday; that whenever we fancy that the way to be wise is, to use our wit and our knowledge for our own glory, and by them to manage our fellow-men, and make them admire us and bow down to us, then we forget the lesson of Good Friday. ”

“ Notwithstanding the belief is openly scouted from the pulpit, and is even boldly defied by a few unbelieving sea-captains, the fact remains that there are very many sober-minded persons who could not be induced on any account to begin a journey on Friday. There are others who will not embark in any new enterprise, or begin a new piece of work on that day; and170 still others who even go so far as to say that you must not cut your nails on Friday. A man could be named who could not be tempted to close a bargain on any other day of the week than Thursday. ”

“ SPEAKING of Friday and the mystery of luck. Luck is supposed to shift in one direction or another on the sixth day of every week in the year. It is supposed to shift for everybody. A great many people are either too ignorant or too supercilious to acknowledge this vast and oppressive truth, however. They regard Friday as a plain, ordinary day, and go on being fatuously optimistic. ”

“ This is Friday."
"Christmas Day," answered 'Bias, wheeling about.
"I can't help that. 'Tis Friday."
"An' next year 'twill be Saturday," retorted 'Bias with a sour grin; "it that'll content you, when it comes. None of us can't help it. ”

“ Friday’s a day as’ll have his trick The fairest or foulest day o’ the wik (Shr.) , cp. ‘Selde is the Fryday al the wyke i-like,’ Chaucer, Knightes Tale, l. 681. It is very unlucky to start out on a journey; to remove from one house to another; to enter upon a new service; or to set a hen on a Friday, but specially unlucky is it to begin new undertakings on Good Friday. [Pg 222] If clothes are washed that day some member of the family will die before the year is out. A Yorkshire superstition holds that if clothes are hung out to dry that day they will be taken in spotted with blood. ”

“ Most things are reckoned as from Friday to Friday, which is market day, and the inhabitants put on their Friday faces and Friday clothes. When it isn't Friday the inhabitants delight in watching the clay-waggons pass their shops, or in dodging them in the narrow, crooked labyrinths called streets. ”

“ Friday was the day sacred to Frigga, queen of the gods.
Saturday received its name from Sæter, god of the harvest.
“One poor day!—
Remember whose, and not how short it is!
It is God’s day, it is Columbus’s.
A lavish day! One day, with life and heart,
Is more than time enough to find a world.”
—James Russell Lowell.
“No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will ”

“ Friday called out to me in English, as well as he could, “O master! you see English mans eat prisoners as well as savage mans.”—“Why,” said I, “Friday, do you think they are going to eat them then”—“Yes,” says Friday, “they will eat them.”—“No, no,” said I, “Friday; I am afraid they will murder them indeed; but you may be sure they will not eat them.” ”

“ And therefore Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, are set as great lights in the firmament of the spiritual year,—to remind us that we are not animals, born to do what we like, and fulfil the sinful lusts of the flesh, the ways whereof are death; but that we are moral and rational beings, members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven; and that, therefore, I say it again, like Christ our Lord, we must die in order to live, stoop in order to conquer. They remind us that honour must grow out of humility; that freedom must grow out of discipline ”

“ Therefore p. 18Good Friday was well and wisely called by our forefathers Good Friday; because it shews, as no other day can do, that God is good; that God’s will to men, in spite of all their sins, is a good will; that so boundless, so utterly unselfish and condescending, is the eternal love of God, that when an insignificant race in a small and remote planet fell, and went wrong, and was in danger of ruin, there was nothing that God would not dare, God would not suffer, for the sake of even such as us, vile earth and miserable sinners.
Yes, this is the good news of Passion-week ”

“ Pomegranates you may cut deep down the middle and see into, but not hearts,—so why should I try and speak?
Friday is best day because nearest, but Saturday is next best—it is next near, you know: if I get no note, therefore, Friday is my day. ”

“ They were wise men who, for all futurity, connected with certain dates the outstanding events of the sacred history, the memory of great saints, confessors and martyrs. Probably we of the Nonconformist pulpits might here learn a lesson in homiletic tactics from our friends of the Roman and Anglican churches. There should only be one subject for Good Friday ”

“ To-morrow, as you know, is Friday and the next day is Saturday, days which, by reason of the viands that are used therein, [146] are somewhat irksome to most folk, more by token that Friday, considering that He who died for our life on that day suffered passion, is worthy of reverence; wherefore I hold it a just thing and a seemly that, in honour of the Divinity, we apply ourselves rather to orisons than to story-telling. As for Saturday, it is the usance of ladies on that day to wash their heads and do away all dust and all uncleanliness befallen them for the labours of the past week ”