“Thank you, I can’t stop,” replied Reuben. He pushed his hat on one side, rubbed his head, looked out of the window, and then said suddenly, as if by a desperate effort, “The fact is, Mr. Green, I didn’t behave right about the oxen.”
“Never mind, never mind,” replied Mr. Green. “Perhaps I shall get into the bog again, some of these rainy days. If I do, I shall know whom to call upon.”
“Why you see,” said Reuben, still very much confused, and avoiding Simeon’s mild clear eye, “you see the neighbors about here are very ugly. If I had always lived by such neighbours as you are, I shouldn’t be just as I am.”
“Ah, well, we must try to be to others what we want them to be to us,” rejoined Simeon. “You know the good book says so. I have learned by experience that if we speak kind words, we hear kind echoes. If we try to make others happy, it fills them with a wish to make us happy. Perhaps you and I can bring the neighbourhood round, in time. Who knows? Let us try, Mr. Black! Let us try! But come and look at my orchard. I want to show you a tree, which I have grafted with very choice apples. If you like I will procure you some scions from the same stock.”
They went into the orchard together, and friendly chat soon put Reuben at his ease. When he returned home, he made no remarks about his visit; for he could not, as yet, summon sufficient greatness of soul to tell his wife that he had confessed himself in the wrong. A gun stood behind the kitchen door, in readiness to shoot Mr. Green’s dog for having barked at his horse. He now fired the contents into the air, and put the gun away in the barn. From that day, henceforth, he never sought for any pretext to quarrel with either the dog or his master. A short time after, Joe Smith, to his utter astonishment, saw him pat Towzer on the head, and heard him say, “Good fellow!”
Simeon Green was far too magnanimous to repeat to any one that his quarrelsome neighbour had confessed himself to blame. He merely smiled as he said to his wife, “I thought we should kill him, after a while.”
Joe Smith did not believe in such doctrines. When he heard of the adventures in the marsh, he said, “Sim Green’s a fool. When he first came here he talked very big about killing folks, if they didn’t mind their Ps and Qs. But he don’t appear to have as much spirit as a worm; for a worm will turn when its trod upon.”
Poor Joe had grown more intemperate and more quarrelsome, till at last nobody would employ him. About a year after the memorable incident of the water-melon, some one stole several valuable hides from Mr. Green. He did not mention the circumstance to any one but his wife; and they both had reasons for suspecting that Joe was the thief. The next week, the following anonymous advertisement appeared in the newspaper of the county:
“Whoever stole a lot of hides on Friday night, the 5th of the present month, is hereby informed that the owner has a sincere wish to be his friend. If poverty tempted him to this false step, the owner will keep the whole transaction a secret, and will gladly put him in the way of obtaining money by means more likely to bring him peace of mind.”[A]
[A] This advertisement is a literal copy of one actually published, and it produced the effects here related.