The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-25
SUBBUBS TALKS
 ABOUT NE|GHBORS He Objects TOITheir Habit Of
 Dropping In HOW CROUCH DEVELOPED Likes Folks Next Door and Across the Way to Look at, But They In-
 terfere With His Desire
 To Do Nothing.
HOW CROUCH DEVELOPED
From the Washington Post.

From the Washington Post.
 "Sometimes,' observed MT. Subbubs, ''I
 find myself wondering if I'm becoming
 a crab, a grump, and a grouch l hope
 not Yet I've got lot of bad-looking
 symptoms. One of these symptoms has
 to do with the way I'm getting to feel
 toward my neighbors.
 q don't speak of 'neighbors' in the 1 Biblical sense-which means all hands,
 everybody living. I mean the people who
 live in my neighborhood, the friends of
 my wife. I always allude to lem as her
 friends. I like to throw the responsibility l for my neighbors upon my wife. I like
 to say to her, when my neghbors reveal ornery little traits, Well, they're your 1 friends, you know. you got acquainted 1 with em, you started this running back | and forth, or at least you encouraged It, l and if you will persist in becoming l chummy with everybody it's your own l fault if they don't pan out just right. I isn't it?'
 "Of course, when I put it in this wise | she invariably declares that have been l thicker with the neighbors we're talking dDOut tudn Sne ever nd0 been. Sn6 seems to take 1t for granted that because when | the neighbors run in,' they call it, I | do not hurl them into the street and toss dishware after them I actually do love 1 my neighbors as myself
 1 Not that there's anything essentially 1 wrong about them. They're emnently respectable folks, beyond all question The only conclusion l can reach. there | fore with respect to my utter lack of the ] neighborly feeling is that I am, or am getting to be, crab, grump. and grouch. Distance Lends Entertainment. Maybe it's the running-in habit of my neighbors that has soured me. Accord ing to my way of thinking, neighbors are all right to look at. For example I like to see the man who lives in the house to the left of me puttering around his front yard, watering the grass, clipping the hedge, and that sof} of thing. I enjoy seeing him work. I enjoy seeing any body work.
 "The matrons in my neigh borhood, my wife's bosom frineds, present a cheerful spectacle as pass along in the morning, rolling up the front curtains into wads and doing all of the sweep ing and dusting tn emselves, while their housemaids stand by and regard them epproving1y.
 The young women in my nefghbor hood-tried and tested. weighed and proved and forever and ever sworn friends of the young women of my fam fly-untfl they get to scrapping, that is-are exceedingly attractive and ami able-looking young persons in my view as I see them draped around tn cir porches and lawns as I swing by. The young cubs in my neighbour ood are mainly well conducted boys as I see them, about two blocks from where I live, playing ball and shinny and so on with my own boys. And so I say that my neighbors all look right, distinctly so. I amend the maxium, Children should be seen, not heard by striking out the word children and inserting neigh bors.
 But as I say, I reckon its this run ning-in habit that has got me grumped up. In suburban places folks get ac- quainted easily and then they begin to run in each other.
 For instance, when the washing is being hung out in the back yard on Monday mornings the wife and mother of the household that has just moved in are pleasantly greeted by the wife and mother next door and the exchange of condolences begins right off. When the man of the just moved in estab- lishment comes home in the evening and begins to prowl around his | grounds in his shirt sleeves, to sort of | get the lay of the land, the proprietor | of the plant next door. also in his 1 shirt sleeves, leans over the fence and, | volunteers the information that lit- l tie rain'd be good for the grass.
 How It Starts.
 Thus it is started. A couple of | evenings later the adult members of | the two families are playing 500 and | fbin0a the same roof, the young women of the l two plants are declaring to each other l that they seem to we known each othe l all their lives, and the boys of the two l outfits are telling each other about | what great and tllustrious men their l respective dads are.
 Theoretically this is beautiful. In the abstract, so to speak, neighborliness of this sort is delightful to contem- plate-from a distance. --venc 6J z 9g6M m)5r8S 33 xzffnh
 But 1t leads, as I say, to that rum ning-in thing. Now. I'm what you would call a settled man. My wife has had me in hand for about quarter of century now. so that I'm broken in to stay at home O nights. It's a heap of a job even for me to bring my wife to town to the theatre about twice month My whole and exclusive idea of comfort after dinner Is a lot of tobacco and a lot of lolling around with the evening papers and such like But the running in habit of my neighbors knocks all this.
 I've just got my cigar going well and settled back to read the inside pages of the evening papers-I chew up the front pages on my way home when the man living three or four doors down runs in on me.
 "Of course, I've got to Hello, old man him, tell him to hang up his hat and sit down; and then I've got to settle back in my chair and make believe that I'm enjoying his views on the tariff question.
 Now, this neighbor always has read the evening paper from start to finish before he runs in on me. And SO when he asks me: Die read about such and such thingr I've got to lie and answer Yes to prevent him from telling me all about 1t, for sure do like to absorb the newspaper news at first hand. Then he drags me into an argument about some- thing or other. Now, I don't like to argue, but sooner or later fall into the trap he has set for me and begin to talk | toisterously through my hat and knock | my digestive apparatus into cooked hat, and what's the good of all that? Neither | my neighbor nor I amounts to leaky |! beanbag in the councils of the nation | or of the world; and so where's the sense l