MY NEIGHBOR WORSTED.
As I look from my window I am surprised at the change the last half hour has wrought upon my neighbor and his immediate surroundings. At that time he emerged from the shed in which he keeps his extra household furniture, with a length of stove-pipe and an elbow under his arms. They were apparently just the things he needed to tone down the draught of his new stove, and shoot the sparks clear of the banker’s eaves.
I think I never saw him look better-natured than at that moment. His face was clear and unruffled as a woodland pool. His children played around him with unsuspecting minds and unlimited speech. The household cat, with all confidence in his noble nature, familiarly rubbed her ribs against his leg, as he for a moment stood deciding which end of the length to introduce to the elbow. Even the old hen roosting on the enclosure seemed to settle her head into her body with more than ordinary satisfaction as she regarded the complacent scene beneath her.
But half an hour ago all was peace, confidence and love, and now what a change is here! I hear the children, but see them not. Their plaintive wail reminds me how often laughter is the harbinger of tears. The hen with ruffled feathers and outstretched neck stands aloof upon the ridge of a distant dwelling. The household cat that had grown old in the family, and had good reason to believe herself privileged, purrs no more. She has painful reasons to think otherwise now, as she crouches in the most retired corner of the premises, assiduously applying whatever balm her tongueaffords to injured parts. She doubtless muses how heavier than an infant’s spoon it is to feel an adult’s boot.
Yet my neighbor was neither rash nor hasty.
He seemed the embodiment of perseverance, as he repeatedly offered that length of stove-pipe an elbow which it, like a prudish maiden, provokingly refused. Soon the drops of perspiration began to stand upon his face and neck in large globes, and I knew that patience was oozing from every pore. I knew by the scattering children, the cackling hen, and the flying household cat, that the “rose-lipped cherubim” of which the poet sings, were abiding with him no longer.
Presently his wife came to his assistance with a case-knife, and for a time it seemed as though victory would crown their united efforts. Reinforcements turned the tide at Waterloo, and laid proud France at the mercy of Europe, and how often the assistance from the mind or arm of a noble wife rolls back the enemy from the door. But reinforcements could not mend the matter here. The poor woman soon retired from the scene with wounded fingers and damaged pride.
My neighbor himself has ceased to strive. Flattened, kicked, and abandoned, the pipes lie masters of the situation.
Ah! I am fully persuaded that neither depth of affliction, nor height of impudence, nor length of trial, nor breadth of argument, nor extravagance, nor parsimony, nor things in particular, nor things in general, can begin to compare, as triers of patience, with a couple of old frill-edged stove-pipes, that emphatically set their edge against a union.