American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1880-10-30

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fined his peculiarities within the limits
of his own household jurisdiction, the
neighbors would have laughed ut him
and thought no more about it. But he
could not do this. He could no more
refrain from assisting his neighbors in
Strengthening out their lines and set
| ting their angles. than the sun could
| help shining in at their windows. And
so, when nearly two years ago he hap
| pened to notice that the long line of
! pickets which guarded the front of his
own and Netherstone's lots seemed to
swing out n little at the south end,
where Netherstone' place abutted on
| Hamilton street, he ut once insisted on
having it Strengthened.
| Mr. Netherstone, usually so yielding
and good-naturedly compliant, objected
in an evasive, undecided manner He
| had been in the habit of complying
with his neighbours whims, and had,
| to a great extent. acted on his advice
in the ornamentation of his yard, the
disposal of shrubbery and arrangement
of few lawn ornaments. But he
| didn't want to move the fence; it stood
| just where the old fence did when he
bought the ground; he didn't believe
it encroached on the sidewalk; if it did,
he would buy it and pay the city well
| for it. In short, he didn't want to move
the fence, and the more Mr.. Baseline
insisted, the more the usually quiet and
compliant miller determined that he
wouidn t.
The neighbors were astonished at Mr.
Netherstone's unheard of obstinacy-
And they were no less amazed at Mr.
Baseline's remarkable patience. For
nearly two years he endured the indie
scribable torture of this crooked feuce,
and its power for cruelty was greatly
aggravated after he rectified his own
line, because that left a great uns ghtly
jog of live inches where the two fences
joined. And only after suffering untold
agonies, and after the peace of his
home had been well-nigh destroyed by
the unsymmetrical fence, had he laid
the matter before the City Council and
obtained redress for his outraged feel
ings, in n peremptory mandate from
the municipal government instructing
the CITY Engineer to correct the align
ment of Mr.. Netherstone's pickets.
The miller acquiesced in the judg-
ment of the powers that be, and within
a few hours after the departure of the
engineer the fence came down, and
men were setting posts on the newly
established and legally-recognized line.
Mr.. Baseline's eyes danced with
evenly-distributed JOY, one eye BEAM
ing no more brightly than the other.
That night he slept the sleep of the
happy man; and if, in the exuberance
of his spirits, he snored, it was with
equal and regular cadences of a we'll
balanced mind. Well for the just man
and the hater of rugged inequalities
had his waking been as smooth as his
sleep.
When he walked out on the piaz-
"a after breakfast, his neighbor, the
miller, had already marshaled the men
VINO were cunning to work with ham,
mer and Ratchet, and was building his
new fence.
And such fence! Mr.. Baseline
caught his breath in one eager, fever
ish grasp and fell into balcony chair,
almost swooning. Great, ragged I'M
blamed boards, with the checkered
marks of the weather and the lumber
pile nothing their surfaces; grinning
Mt Mr.. Baseline with the most horrible
knot-holes; warped out of shape and
into all other shapes; culls from the
refuse of the rats; bit of sixteen-foot
fencing towering above a piece of nine
foot flooring; here and there a slab
from the saw mill, nailed on with the
round side to the street and the bark
hanging to it in shreds and patches.
The boys in the street stopped to
stare at it; the horses in the street cars,
when they came within sight of that
fence, baked. and when whipped past
it by the wondering drivers, SHE'D and
trial to laa1sIa tina Warrant DOGS
looked at it suspiciously, and, whimper-
ing with vague terror. scampered
clear around the block rather than run
by it. The neighbors got out of bed
and came to look at it, and old Isaac
Stringer said "that ar new fence
of Netherstone's 'ud curdle the milk in
the cellar The policeman on that
beat loosely asked Mr.. Netherstone if
.'was going to leave it out all night?"
And a reporter, who heard of it and
came up to look Mt it, told Mr.. Neither
stone the County Central Committee
would like to buy it for a campaign doc
ument.
In response to the wonder of neigh
bOrs, the chafliing of his friends, the
reproachful agony Of Mr.. Baseline, and
the serious inquiries of newspaper re-
porters, the miller simply said that
business had been very dull with him
this year, he was greatly embarrassed,
and compelled to practice the most
Ilpiu cCouOIily III OrucT W pun through,
and that was the best fence he could
afford to build.
And when Mr.. Bascline rebukingly
asked him what he had done with the
good fence he had taken down, and why
he did not pit it up on the new line,
Mr.. Netherstone calmly replied that he
had lost it through a hole in his pocket,
and it had dropped in the straw on the
floor of the car, and he could not find
it. And when his neighbor, with con-
siderable heat, scoffed ut this reply as
evasive and deceitful, Mr.. Netherstone
then, with an expression of grave
humility, confessed that he had care
lessly dropped the old fence through a
crack in the sidewalk, and boy got
it and ran away with it. He babe his
distressed neighbor, however, give him
self no uneasiness, as he would have
the new fence fixed up in the most
artistic and modern style tomorrow.
Hoping as one who hopes against |
some awful, unknown, intangible, but |
surely impending horror, Mr.. Baseline |
closed his eyes that night in ftful |
slumber, haunted in his sleeping |
moments by the nightmare of fence |
with more angles than a starfsh, and |
more sinuosities than a grapevine. And |
when slumber summed his feverish |
eyelids, he wondered until his brain |
fairly whirled if this fantastic fence was |
really the shape of his long-suffering
vengeance, or only horrible
dream.
The next morning the fence was there
in all its CHASTITY nakedness. But, about
fan o'clnck liyel yonnor