Welcome back, everyone to 1001 classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Haggardorn.

Today, a great story from Frank Stockton, called

My Unwilling Neighbor. I was about 25 years old when I began life as the owner of a vineyard

in western Virginia. I bought a large tract of land, the greater part of which lay upon the sloping side of one

of the foothills of the Blue Ridge, the exposure being that most favorable to the growth of the

vine. I am an enthusiastic lover of the country and of country life, and believe that I should derive

more pleasure as well as profit from the culture of my far-stretching vineyard than I would from

ordinary farm operations. I built myself a good house of moderate size upon a little plateau on the

higher part of my estate. Sitting on my porch, smoking my pipe after the labors of the day,

I could look down over my vineyard into a beautiful valley,

with here and there a little curling smoke arising from some of the few dwellings which were

scattered about among the groves and spreading fields. And above this beauty, I could imagine all my

hillside clothed in green and purple. My family consisted of myself alone.

It is true that I expected someday that there would be others in my house besides myself,

but I was not ready for this yet.

During the summer I found it very pleasant to live by myself.

It was a novelty,

and I could arrange and manage everything in my own fashion,

which was a pleasure I had not enjoyed when I lived in my father's house. But when winter came,

I found it very lonely. Even my servants lived in a cabin at some little distance, and there were

many dark and stormy evenings when the company even of a boor would have been

...