Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1878-03-29
" Just Dropped In"

Neighbors are an excellent instftu-
ton, if they only keep their places. Bat
neighbors out of their places are quite
another thing.
The Bible enjoins it upon us to love
our neighbor as ourself, and then peril
nently inquiries, who is our neighbour
If anybody can love a meddlesome,
envious, prying back-door neighbor, he
must have more grace and patience than
the most of us. Ia a...
In large cities the inhabitants know
very little about neighbors; but in coun-
try villages and in the rural regions it
is altogether different. t l,f ..rl
Every neighborhood' has one or more
of those troublesome people who are
continually dropping in. They are of
both genders, and equally disagreeable.
Your female neighbor comes overwhile
you are at breakfast and begs you won
mind her, and she sits down in the din
ing-room, and stares at you while you
eat, and fixes her eyes on the patch on
the table-cloth, and shows by her eX-
preston that she knows your forks are
plated. If you have bacon for break
fast, she tells You that She dislikes
pork, and insinuates that it is unfit for
Christians to eat, but she will add, as a
sort of qualiGer, that, if you like it, it is
all right. ta aaa-f .a
Then she will want the pattern of lit
tie Joe's apron, and she will 60 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. 4-
You never can have anything or do
anything without your back-doOr neigh
boris cognizance. She is as keen on
the scent as bloodhound. Your new
spring suit, that you have vowed she
should not see until you appeared in it
at church, she spies out by piece of
the trimming 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 made 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 u sallow
| complexion. neil ss7.
When she finds out that you pur-
chased the material at Smith S, she says
that she always shops at Jones'. Jones
is to be relied upon, but then Smith
tells a good story, and knows Just how
! to handle customers who do not under
stand goods. And then she asks again
what you paid for your dress, and you
| dare not tell her cent more on a yard
than it really was, for you know she
will go directly and ask Smith all about
| it. 80 "--
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 lit
tie higher than the actual facts will
warrant? Why is it that we all want TO
have it thought that our twenty-dollar
suits cost thirtyP and our hundred-dol-
lar parlor sets cost hundred and fifty?
Our back-dOor neighbor sees through
all our little shifts to appeal 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 sit
ting-room to hide that thin place in the
carpet; she knows that we useibrown
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 doOrsgwhen things do
not suit him. ,Iset.H s4t-1 ,safUl ~
She just drops in two or three times a
week, sometimes 0ftener. and is only
going to stop q 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 anything in the woSld but
because she was afraid of hurting your
feelings. .s. ls.-,.
She only just dropped in a moment,
and never thought of stopping.
No, indeed! .-..I mo
Nothing of your family affairs is safe
from her observation. She knows Just
how often your oldest girl has gentle
men to call on her, and who they are,
and what they are, and how late they
stay nights, and who their grandfathers
were, and all the other particulars.
She is perpetual thorn in the flesh,
and it is better to live by a school,
house, kerosene refinery, a cotton
mill, piano salesroom, or a bone-boil'
ing establishment than to live mex
door to a woman who is always drop
ping in.-Kdte Thorn, ia N. y. Weekly
The trade notices of some of the
Ion1On aSSOpiatiOnS are curiOuS ffhf