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Then there was the man who sniffed interminably

He sat next to Mr Jasper on the bus Everyup the front step and weave along the aisle to plop hiht for paper �C sniff, sniff!

Mr Jasper would writhe And wonder why thenext to him There were other seats available, yet the man invariably dropped his lumpish frame beside Mr Jasper and sniffed the miles ainter and sueles ranted But they certainly did not warrant this endless sniffling as though pneuave Mr Jasper the willies

He made several atte First of all, he moved back two seats from his usual location TheMr Jasper, theby me and hasn’t noticed that I’veday Mr Jasper sat on the other side of the aisle He sat with irascible eye watching the man weave his bulk up the aisle Then his vitals petrified as the lared an abolare out the

Sniff! �C went the round together in porcelain fury

The next day he sat near the back of the bus The man sat next to him The next day he sat near the front of the bus Thepatience for a mile and a third Then, jaded beyond endurance, he turned to theplaint

The aped at Mr Jasper with cow like, uncoth away fro fro fool had looked at him, he brooded It was insufferable As if, by heaven, he had done so offensive!

Well, at least, he wasnostrils Crouched ned with relief

And the boy standing next to him whistled twenty-three choruses of Dixie

Mr Jasper sold neckties

It was an euaranteed to scrape away the lining of any but the most impassive stomachs

Mr Jasper’s stomach walls were of the ravation, by annoyance and by woered and felt the wool and cotton and silk and walked aith no purchase Wouered Mr Jasper’s inflaations and decrees and left no id Mr Jasper, one jot nearer to inevitable detonation

With every taxing custo host of brilliantly nasty remarks would rise up in Mr Jasper’sthe one before His mind would positively ache to see theue and, burning hot, spout directly into the wo phantoh his ue, calcifying his bones with unspent wrath

Then there were the women in the store cafeteria They talked while they ate and they ss at the very est a bowl of tomato soup into his ulcered stomach Poof! went the ladies and waved their pretty hands to dispel the unwanted s to emboss, he would wave it back The women returned it Thus did the smoke circulate until thinned out or reinforced by new, yetand ladling and sing, Mr Jasper had spasms The tannic acid of his tea hardly served to ste in his stoers and return to work, a cracking man

To face a full afternoon of co of irl who shared the counter with hih she wanted the people in Arabia to hear her chewing The s made Mr Jasper’s insides do frenzied contortions, made him stand statue like and disordered or else burst out with a hissing:

’Stop that disgusting sound!’

Life was full of irritations

Then there were the neighbours, the people who lived upstairs and on the sides The society of them, that ubiquitous brotherhood which always lived in the apartments around Mr Jasper

They were a unity, those people There was a touchstone of attitude in their behaviour, a distinct criterion of hty tread, of reasse wild and noisy parties every other night and inviting only those people who promised to wear hobnailed boots and dance the chicken reel Of arguing about all subjects at top voice, of playing only cowboy and hillbilly music on a radio whose volume knob was irretrievably stuck at its farthest point Of owning a set of lungs disguised as a two to twelveto emit sounds reminiscent of the lament of air raid sirens

Mr Jasper’s present nee seven s which did their best work between four and five in theon to his thin back in the dark, furnished, two-roo and waiting for the sound It got to a point where his brain dragged him fro If Albert Radenhausen, Junior, chose to slu for the cries

He would try to sleep, but jangling concentration , then to the host of other sounds which beset his hypersensitive ears

A car coughing past in the street A rattle of Venetian blind A set of lone footsteps so of a dog, the rubbing legs of crickets, the creaking of wood Mr Jasper could not control it all Those sound makers he could not stuff, pad, twist off, adjust to �C kept plaguing hiht fists at his sides

Sleep still eluded He would jolt up, heaving aside the sheets and blankets, and sit there staring nu for Albert Radenhausen, Junior, toin the blackness, his ht Unduly sensitive? �C he would comment within I deny this vociferously I am aware, Mr Jasper would self-claim No more I have ears I can hear, can’t I?

It was suspicious

What s that notion came, Mr Jasper could not recall But once it had coh the definition of it was blunted by passing days, the core re duress, the idea would reoccur Other ti beneath the surface

But it stuck All these things that happened to him Were they subjective or objective, within or without? They see until the sum of provocations alh it were done with intent As if

As if it were a plan

Mr Jasper experimented

Initial equipment consisted of one white pad, lined, plus his ball-point pen Pri down various exasperations with the time of their occurrence, the location, the sex of the offender and the relative grossness of the annoyance; this last aspect gradated by nu from one to ten

Example one, clu, 452 a this entry, Mr Jasper settled back on his flattened pilloith a sigh approxi satisfaction The start was made In a few days he would knoith assurance if his unusual speculation was justified

Before he left the house at eight-seventeen am, Mr Jasper had accu on floor, 633 auess), 5

Traffic noise, 700 am outside of room, males, 6

Radio on loud, 740 am on, upstairs from room, female, 7

One rather odd facet of Mr Jasper’s efforts came to his attention as he left his small apartment This was, in short, that he had put down h this simple expedient of written analysis Not that the various noises had failed, at first, to set his teeth on edge and cause his hands to flex involuntarily at his sides They had not Yet the translation of aravation to one succinct

The bus trip to work provided further notations

The sniffing man drew one immediate and automatic entry But once that irritant was disposed of, Mr Jasper was alarmed to note the rapid accumulation of four more No matter where hepen-point fro out more words

Garlic breath, 827 a, 828 ay, 829 ao to back of bus, 833 aain beside the man with the uncommon cold He did not take the pad froether bitterly Later he erased the original grading for the man

10! he wrote in a fury

And at lunch, aonisations, Mr Jasper, with a fierce and jaundiced eye, saw systee

1 At least one irritation per five minutes (Twelve per hour) Not perfectly ti to throwcontinuity

2 Each of the 12 hourly irritations is worse than the one before The last of the 12 al the irritations so that each one tops the preceding one the final hourly addition is thus designed to providecold, a wild scientific lustre to his eyes, investigatory heat churning up his system Yes, by Heaven, yes, yes, yes!

But hes and unpalatable food He slunk back to his counter He spent a joyous afternoon scribbling down entries in his journal of convulsions

The system held