Meanwhile, though sunlight has gone down,
Life’s ev’ning wears a starry crown,
Where weary ones, who look above,
May read the letters, “God is love.”
THE MAN THAT KILLED HIS NEIGHBOURS.
THE PRINCIPAL INCIDENTS OF THIS STORY ARE FACTS.
Send thou abroad a love for all who live,
And feel the deep content in turn they give.
Kind wishes and good deeds—they make not poor;
They’ll home again, full laden to thy door.
The streams of love flow back where they begin;
For springs of outward joys lie deep within.
R. W. Dana.
It is curious to observe how a man’s spiritual state reflects itself in the people and animals around him; nay, in the very garments, trees and stones.
Reuben Black was an infestation in the neighbourhood where he resided. The very sight of him produced effects similar to the Hindoo magical tune, called Raug, which is said to bring on clouds, storms, and earthquakes. His wife seemed lean, sharp, and uncomfortable. The heads of his boys had a bristling aspect, as if each individual hair stood on end with perpetual fear. The cows poked out their horns horizontally, as soon as he opened the barn-yard gate. The dog dropped his tail between his legs, and eyed him askance, to see what humour he was in. The cat looked wild and scraggy, and had been known to rush straight up the chimney when he moved toward her. Fanny Kemble’s expressive description of the Pennsylvanian stage-horses was exactly suited to Reuben’s poor old nag. “His hide resembled an old hair-trunk.” Continual whipping and kicking had made him such a stoic, that no amount of blows could quicken his pace, and no chirruping could change the dejected drooping of his head. All his natural language said, as plainly as a horse could say it, that he was a most unhappy beast. Even the trees on Reuben’s premises had a gnarled and knotted appearance. The bark wept little sickly tears of gum, and the branches grew awry, as if they felt the continual discord, and made sorry faces at each other, behind their owner’s back. His fields were red with sorrel, or run over with mullein. Every thing seemed as hard and arid as his own visage. Every day, he cursed the town and the neighbourhood, because they poisoned his dogs, and stoned his hens, and shot his cats. Continual law-suits involved him in so much expense, that he had neither time nor money to spend on the improvement of his farm.
Against Joe Smith, a poor labourer in the neighbourhood, he had brought three suits in succession. Joe said he had returned a spade he borrowed, and Reuben swore he had not. He sued Joe, and recovered damages, for which he ordered the sheriff to seize his pig. Joe, in his wrath, called him an old swindler, and a curse to the neighbourhood. These remarks were soon repeated to Reuben. He brought an action for slander, and recovered twenty-five cents. Provoked at the laugh this occasioned, he watched for Joe to pass by, and set his big dog upon him, screaming furiously, “Call me an old swindler again, will you?” An evil spirit is more contagious than the plague. Joe went home and scolded his wife, and boxed little Joe’s ears, and kicked the cat; and not one of them knew what it was all for. A fortnight after, Reuben’s big dog was found dead by poison. Whereupon he brought another action against Joe Smith, and not being able to prove him guilty of the charge of dog-murder, he took his revenge by poisoning a pet lamb, belonging to Mrs. Smith. Thus the bad game went on, with mutual worriment and loss. Joe’s temper grew more and more vindictive, and the love of talking over his troubles at the grogshop increased upon him. Poor Mrs. Smith cried, and said it was all owing to Reuben Black; for a better-hearted man never lived than her Joe, when she first married him.
Such was the state of things when Simeon Green purchased the farm adjoining Reuben’s. The estate had been much neglected, and had caught thistles and mullein from the neighbouring fields. But Simeon was a diligent man, blessed by nature with a healthy organization and a genial temperament; and a wise and kind education had aided nature in the perfection of her goodly work. His provident industry soon changed the aspect of things on the farm. River-mud, autumn leaves, old shoes, and old bones, were all put in requisition to assist in the production of use and beauty. The trees, with branches pruned, and bark scraped free from moss and insects, soon looked clean and vigorous. Fields of grain waved where weeds had rioted. Persian lilacs bowed gracefully over the simple gateway. Michigan roses covered half the house with their abundant clusters. Even the rough rock which formed the door-step, was edged with golden moss. The sleek horse, feeding in clover, tossed his mane and neighed when his master came near; as much as to say “The world is all the pleasanter for having you in it, Simeon Green!” The old cow, fondling her calf under the great walnut tree, walked up to him with serious friendly face, asking for the slice of sugar-beet he was wont to give her. Chanticleer, strutting about, with his troop of plump hens and downy little chickens, took no trouble to keep out of his way, but flapped his glossy wings, and crowed a welcome in his very face. When Simeon turned his steps homeward, the boys threw up their caps and ran out shouting, “Father’s coming!” and little Mary went toddling up to him, with a dandelion blossom to place in his button-hole. His wife was a woman of few words, but she sometimes said to her neighbours, with a quiet kind of satisfaction, “Everybody loves my husband that knows him. They can’t help it.”
Simeon Green’s acquaintance knew that he was never engaged in a law-suit in his life; but they predicted that he would find it impossible to avoid it now. They told him his next neighbour was determined to quarrel with people, whether they would or not; that he was like John Liburne, of whom Judge Jenkins said, “If the world was emptied of every person but himself, Liburne would still quarrel with John, and John with Liburne.”
“Is that his character?” said Simeon, in his smiling way. “If he exercises it upon me, I will soon kill him.”
In every neighbourhood there are individuals who like to foment disputes, not from any definite intention of malice or mischief, but merely because it makes a little ripple of excitement in the dull stream of life, like a contest between dogs or game-cocks. Such people were not slow in repeating Simeon Green’s remark about his wrangling neighbour. “Kill me! will he?” exclaimed Reuben. He said no more; but his tightly compressed mouth had such a significant expression, that his dog dodged him, as he would the track of a tiger. That very night, Reuben turned his horse into the highway, in hopes he would commit some depredations on neighbour Green’s premises. But Joe Smith, seeing the animal at large, let down the bars of Reuben’s own corn-field, and the poor beast walked in, and feasted as he had not done for many a year. It would have been a great satisfaction to Reuben if he could have brought a lawsuit against his horse; but as it was, he was obliged to content himself with beating him. His next exploit was to shoot Mary Green’s handsome chanticleer, because he stood on the stone wall and crowed, in the ignorant joy of his heart, two inches beyond the frontier line that bounded the contiguous farms. Simeon said he was sorry for the poor bird, and sorry because his wife and children liked the pretty creature; but otherwise it was no great matter. He had been intending to build a poultry yard, with a good high fence, that his hens might not annoy his neighbours; and now he was admonished to make haste and do it. He would build them a snug warm house to roost in; they should have plenty of gravel and oats, and room to promenade back and forth, and crow and cackle to their heart’s content; there they could enjoy themselves, and be out of harm’s way.