A Friend in Need

People are sure that the first impression about a person is always correct. But this is not always true. If you have been studying people for more than thirty years, you can notice one important pattern. People often think that appearance shows character. But the longer people know each other, the less they know about each other. Over time, a person becomes more and more mysterious. Many can only say about their old friends that they know nothing about them. These thoughts visit the writer when he reads about the death of his old friend. That man was a merchant and lived in Japan. He was a short old man with bright blue eyes and a red face. He was very slim for his age. And the man behaved unusually for such an appearance.