play a tune or sing a song which is
objectionable to you; and if you request him to pass on and he
refuses to go, you may treat him as a trespasser and make him pay
damages and costs, if he is financially responsible.[73] And
likewise, if any person does anything on the highway in front of
your premises to disturb the peace, to draw a crowd together, or to
obstruct the way, he is answerable in damages to you and liable to
an indictment by the grand jury.[74]

[73] 38 Me. 195.

[74] 24 Pick. 187.

Although the owner of the fee in a highway has many rights in the
way not common to the public, yet he must exercise those rights with
due regard to the public safety and convenience. Perhaps, in the
absence of objections on the part of the highway surveyor, or of
prohibitory by-laws on the part of the town, he has a right to take
soil or other material from the roadside for his own private use,
but he certainly has no right to injure the road by his excavations,
or to endanger the lives of travellers by leaving unsafe pits in the
wayside. He can load and unload his vehicles in the highway, in
connection with his business on the adjoining land, but it must be
done in such a manner as not unreasonably to interfere with or
incommode the travelling public. When a man finds it necessary to
crowd his teams and wagons into the street, and thereby blockade the
highway for hours at a time, he ought either to enlarge his premises
or remove his business to some more convenient spot. He has a right
to occupy the roadside with his vehicles, loaded or unloaded, to a
reasonable extent; but when he fills up the road with logs and wood,
tubs and barrels, wagons and sleighs, pig-pens and agricultural
machinery, or deposits therein stones and rubbish, he is not using
the highway properly, but is abusing it shamefully, and is
responsible in damages to any one who is injured in person or
property through his negligence, and, moreover, is liable to
indictment for illegally obstructing the roadway.[75] As before said,
he has a perfect right to pasture the roadside with his animals; but
if he turns them loose in the road, and they there injure the person
or property of any one legally travelling therein, he is answerable
in damages to the full extent of the injuries, whether he knows they
have any vicious habits or not.[76] If his cow, bull, or horse, thus
loose in the highway, gore or kick the horse of some traveller, he
is liable