STRAINED RELATIONS.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5073, 18 April 1885, Page 4

STRAINED RELATIONS.

My relations with a neighbor of mine are somewhat strained. Two years ago I moved into the beautiful cottage tenement where I now reside, and at once entered upon the most cordial relations with the man who .lives just, west of me. Osr families, also, seemed to be exceedingly . harmonions, and all our lives were full of the promise of uninterrupted sociability. This lißppy state of affairs continued for six.months, when one day my seven years old boy .came to me with a grievance in the form of & black eye. He narrated the circumstances under which he contracted the complaint, and I at once concluded that he had caught the malady from the twelve years old son' of my neighbor. I at once quarantined against the son of my neighbor above mentioned, and nailed up a hole in the fence, through which we had kept up an unfailing stream of harmony flowing for sis.happy moons. My neighbor observed the watchful cars I was exercising, and retaliated by driving a plug in the .end of my kitchen drain, which opened, on .his premises. This incensed my wife, and she buried the remnants of our several meals to prevent my neighbor's dog from choking on the bones which lurked among them. My ■ neighbor's wife, equally solicitious of our hens, shooed them out of her yard with pieces of pavement, to prevent them from 1 contracting the gaps, by eating the frag* ments of uncombed hash she sometimes tossed out of the window. I recalled my minister, and he withdrew Bis ambassador from my court, but the war-clouds were gradually dissipated, and we resumed diplomatic relations. Of course, having misunderstood each other once, we were guarded in our intercourse afterwards.. Whenever my wife saw one of the neighbor's children approaching through the re opened fence, she concealed her jewellery, consisting of a brass ring and two rolled gold bracelets, and when she made a call on my neighbor's wife, she said the sMver spoons which once were so proudly arrayed before her were nowhere to be seen. ' Presuming too much upon the armistice between us, she intimated to another neighbor soon afterwards that she believed our friends bad pawned their table-ware, and that woman told another one about it, and she told the, folks most interested that .Mrs Smith said thai Mrs Huddle had told her that they had pawned their silverware to a Mother Hubbard, and ray neighbor's wife retorted that Mrs Huddle lied, and that she had no silver-service to pawn except a nickel-plated castor and four brass napkin rings. Mrs Bn^vn conveyed this information to Mrs Smith, who transmitted it to my wife, who informed me at noon, whon I came home to soup. I at once hired a fourteen year old boy , to lam the stuffing out of my neighbor's twelve years old son, and after lie bad accomplished the feat, he told his pros- ' trate foe what actuated him to such defeats of valor, and now (he hole in the partition fence is nailed up again, and no -reciprocity exists between the rival powers, The situation is daily growing more strained. Lust week, our chickens began dying of cholera, and the day following, my neighbor's dog had an acute attack of inflammation of the bowels which resulted fatally. IS 7o post mortema have been held, and our respective druggists •are reticent. My neighbor bas lost the , handle of hi*B pump, and the door of my coal-shed has been utilized by same one for kindling wood. Last Christmas my gate got road and wandered away from home, and two dead cats fell into my neighbor's cistern. My neighbor has procured a sword and a revolver, aDd the polished surface of a razor and blue barrel of a repenting rifle gleam in my kitchen. My neighbor slyly opens his back door and points his pistol out when he rises in the morning, only to find that my rifle is already levelled at his hea.d. Then we both dodge, and that is the last we\see of each other that day. . ■