A NEW TALE OF A TUB.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 611, 3 June 1876, Page 3

A NEW TALE OF A TUB.

( Danbury Ne'cs. ) It was all about a wash tub. Mrs Villiers had loaned Mrs Ransom her wash tub. This was two weeks ago last Monday. When Mrs Villiers saw it again, which was the next morning, it stood on her back stoop, minus a hoop. Mrs Villiers sent over to Mrs Ransom’s a request for that hoop, couched in language calculated to impugn Mrs Hansom’s reputation for carefulness. Mrs Ransom lost no time in sending hack word that the tub was all right when it was sent back, and delicately intimated that Mrs Villiers had better sweep before her own door first, whatever that might mean. Each having discharged a Christian duty to each other, further communication was immediately cut off, and the affair was briskly discussed by the neighbours, who entered into the merits I and demerits of the affair with imsellish zeal. Heaven bless them. Mrs Ransom clearly explained her connection with the tub by charging Mr Villiers with coming j home drunk as a fiddler the night before Christinas. This bold statement threatened to carry the neighbours over in a body to Airs Ransom’s view, until Mrs Villiers remembered, and promptly chronicled, the fact that the Ransom’s were obliged to move away from their last place because of nonpayment of rent. Here the matter rested among the neighbours, leaving them as undecided as before. But between the two families immediately concerned the fires burned as luridly as when first kindled. It was a constant skirmish between the two women, from early morn until late at night. Airs Ransom would glare through her blinds when Mrs Villiers was in the yard, and murmur between her clenched teeth — ‘ Oh, you hussy !’ Ami Avitb that wondrous instinct which characterises the human above the brute animal, Mrs Villiers understood that Airs Ransom was thus engaged, and lifting her nose at the highest angle compatible with the safety of her spinal cord, would sail around the yard as triumphantly as if escorted by a brigade of genuine princes. And then would come Airs Vilhers’s turn at the window with Mrs Ransom in the yard, with a like satisfactory and edifying result. When company called on Airs Villiers, Mrs Ransom would peer from behind her curtains, and audibly exclaim ; ‘ Who’s that fright, I wonder !’ And when Airs Ransom was favoured with a call, it was Mrs Villiers’s blessed privilege to be at the window, and audibly observe : ‘ Where was that clod dug up from ?’ Mrs Ransom has a little boy named Tommy, and Airs Villiers had a similarly sized'son who struggles under the cognomen of Wickliffe Alorgan. It will happen—because those children are too young to grasp fully the grave responsibilities of life

—it will happen, we repeat, that they will come together in various respects. If Mrs Ransom is so fortunate as to first observe one of those cohesions, she promptly steps to the door, and covertly waiting until Mrs Villiers’s door opens, she shrilly observes ;

‘ Thomas Jefferson, come right into this house this minnit. How many times have I told you to keep away from that Villiers’s brat ? ’ Villiers’s brat 1 What a stab that is. What subtle poison it is saturated with. Poor Mrs Villiers’s breath comes thick and aard, her face burns like fire, and her eyes almost snap out of her head. She has to press her hand to her heart, as if to keep that organ from bursting. There is .no relief from the dreadful throbbing and dreadful pain. The slamming of Mrs Ramson’s door shuts out all hope of succour. But it cprickens Mrs Villiers’s faculties, and makes her so alert that when the two children came together again, which they very soon do, she is the first at the door. Now is the opportunity to heap burning coals on the head of Mrs Ransom. She heaps them ; 4 Wickliffe Morgan ! What are you doing oirt there with that Ransom imp ? Do you av ant to catch some disease ? Come in here before I skin you.’ And the door slams shut. And poor Mrs Ransom, with trembling form and bated breath, and flashing eyes, clenches her lin gers, and glares with tremendous wratl over the landscape. And in the absence of any real tangible information as to the loss of that hoop, this is, perhaps, the very best that can be done on either side.