Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-03-31
''JUSt DrOUpcd i3t,r

Neighbors are an excellent institution,
II they only keep their places. But neigh
hors out of their places are quite an
other thing.
The Bible enjoins it upon Us to love
our neighbor as ourself, and then peril
nently inquiries, who is our ne;ghbor?
If anybody can low. meddlesome,
envicus, prying back door neighbour, he
must have more grace and patience than
the most of us.
In large cities the inhabitants know
very little about neighbors; but In coun-
try villages and in the rural regions II is
altogether different
Every nei ghborhood has one or more
Of those troublesome people who are con
t1nually dropping in. They are Of both
genders, and equally disagreeable. Your
female nelghbor comes over while YOU
are at breakfast and begs you won't mind
her, and she sits down in the dining room.
and stares at you while you eat, and fixes
her eyes on the patch on the table cloth,
and shows by her expression that she
knows your forks are plated If YOU
have bacon for breakfast, she tells you
she dlsllkes pork and insinuates
that it IS unfit for Christians to eat, but
she will add, as sort of qualifcr, that.
if you like it, it is all right
Then she will want the pattern of little
Joe's apron, and she will go into your
parlor to get the last fashion magazine, to
save you the trouble Of going, when you
know she only does it for an excuse to
pass by your bedroom door, to see if the
bed is made.
You never can have anything or do
anything without your back door neigh
bors cogniZance. She is as keen on the
scent as blood -hound. Your new
spring suit, that you have vowed she
should not see until you appeared in it at
church, she spies out by a piece of trim
ming carelessly left in your work basket.
and she guesses at its cost, and asks
where you got it, and how many yards
you had, and who cut it, and if YOU
m ade it yourself, and says she likes blue
but then green is all the style. But she
supposes you got blue because green is
so trying to a sallow complexion.
When she finds out that you purchased
the material at Smiths she says that ste
always shops at Jones'. Jones is to be
relied npon, but then Smith tells good
story, and knows just how TO handle Gus
toners who do not understand goods.
And then She asks again what YOU paid
for your dress, and you dare not tell her
cent more on yard than it really was,
for you know size will 90 directly and
ask Smith all about it.
And this brings us to wonder why it
is that women in general, and nearly
everybody else, are prone to represent the
price OF articles they purchase a little
higher than the actual facts will warrent2
Why is it that we all want to have it
thought that our twenty dollar suits cost
! thirty and our hundred dollar parlor sets
cost a hundred and fifty?
Our back-door neighbo1 sees through
all our little shifts to appear better than
we are, and she lets US know that she does.
She knows that the handsome rug was
put before the sofa in our sitting room to.
hide that thin place in the carpet; she
knows that we use brown sugar to sweeten
pies and doughnuts, she knows that our
Tom will swear when he is out of humor,
and that Mr.. Brown slams the doors when
things do not suit him.
She just drops in two or three times q
week, sometimes oftener, and is only 60
ing to stop minute. She never takes
her hat and shawl off because she can't
stop. And there she will sit and talk,
and hinder you with your work, and
spoil the whole forenoon for you, and, ten
to one, she stays to dinner, and protests
that she wouldn't have stopped for any
thing in the world but because she was.
afraid of hurting your feelings.
She only just dropped in a moment, and
never thoght of stopping.
| No, indeed
Nothing of your family affairs is safe
from her observation. She knows Just
how often your Oldest girl has gentlemen
to call on her and who they are, and how
late they stay nights, and who their
grandfathers were, and all the other par
| ticulars.
She is perpetual thorn in the flesh,
and it is better to live by a school house,
kerosene refinery, cotton mill, piano
salesroom, or bone boiling establish
ment thaI to live next door to woman
who is always dropping in.-Kate Thorn,
tn ". Y. Weekly.