Before returning home I called on a friend who also dwelt in furnished apartments. Far from seraphic was the state of mind in which I found him.
“What can be done to stop that horrid noise? It will drive me mad!” was his petulant salutation.
I listened, and heard the dull, rumbling noise of some wheeled machine being rolled, now fast, now slow, then up, then down, in the room above.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, I know what it is only too well. A foolish young couple live up stairs, and their first baby is teething or something of the sort, and whines and howls incessantly, so the mother by day and the father by night continually trundle it up and down the room in a parlor baby-carriage, making such a noise that I can neither read nor sleep. It is a regular nuisance, and I’ll have it stopped.”
“I suppose that they don’t do it merely to disturb and annoy you, but rather for the good of the juvenile,” I remarked.
“As for that matter I presume their intentions are honorable, but that does not make any difference.”
“Yes it does; the very point has been decided by Judge Van Hoesen, of New York. To him a Mr. Pool applied for an injunction to prevent one off his fellow-lodgers wheeling a sick child about the room.”
“Well, what was the result?”
“Why, as it did not appear that the noise was made unnecessarily, but only from the attempt to soothe the infant, the court refused to interfere with the amusement of the child, saying that the occupants of buildings where there are other tenants cannot restrain the others from any use they may choose to make of their own apartments, consistent with good neighborhood and with a reasonable regard for the comfort of others.”