Newport weekly independent., 1902-08-22
A MORTAL ANTIPITHY
BY JACK LONDON

melting into the cheeks, to complete the perfect round, and the nose broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference, fattened against the very center of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Per haps this is why 1 hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes, and l believed the eas<h to be cum bered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been supersti- tious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at the wrong time.
 But be that as it may, hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what society would consider a wrong or an i'll turn. Far from it, in any such sense. The evil was of a deeper, subtler sort, so elusive, so in- tangible, as to defy definite analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives. For the first time we see a certain individual: one whom the very in- stant before we did not dream ex- isted; and yet, at the the first mo- ment of meeting we say: "l do not like that man." Why do we not like him? An, we do not know why: we only know that we do not. We have taken a dislikek, that is all. And so l with John Claverhouse.
 What right had such man to be happy: Yet he was an optimist. He was always gleeful and laughing. All things ;-are always all right, curse him. An! how it grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other men could laugh and it did not bother he. l even used to laugh myself before I met John Claverhouse.
 But his laugh. It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under the sun could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and would not let me go. It was a huge Gargan- tuan laugh. Waking or sleeping 1t was always with me, whirring and jar ring across my heart-strings and the very fibers of my being like an enor- nous rasp. At break of day it came whooping across the fields to ospoll my pleasant morning reverie. Under the aching noon-day glare, when the green things dropped and the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature drowsed, his great "Ha. hap and "Ho! hoH rose up to the sky and challenged the sun. And at black midnight, from the lonely crossroads where he turned from town into his own place, came his plaguey cachinnatlons to rouse me from my sleep and make me toss about and clench my nails into my palms.
 I went forth privily in the night time and turned his cattle into hls fields, and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove them out again. "It is nothing" he said; the poor dumb beasties are not to De blamed for straying into latter pas ture."
 He had dog called "Nlars," a big, splendid brute, part deerhound and part bloodhound, and resembling both. Mars was great delight to him, and they were always together. But I bided my time, and one day, when opportunity was ripe, lured the animal away and settled tor hlm with arsenic and beefsteak. It made positively no impression on John Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and frequent as ever, ana his face as much like the full moon as it always had been.
 Then I set fire to his hay-stacks and his barn. But the next morning, be- ing Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.
 "Where are you going?" l asked him as he went by the crossroads.
 "Trout." he said. and his face