Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1880 — The Mule and the Locomotive. [ARTICLE]

The Mule and the Locomotive.

A California community has surpassed the atrocity of Spanish bullfights by a match between a mule and a lccomo ive! The mule was a large and bony army mule, and the locomotive was one of the celebrated Paterson breed. A circular track was built in a large temporary amphitheater, on which the locomotive was run at full speed, and the mule was let loose in the arena to deal with its antagonist as it saw fit. The mule watched the locomotive for some time, with its ears in a threatening attitude, and, when the locomotive had attained a spaed of full fifty miles an hour, backed up in front of it, and delivered a kick with both feet, The locomotive was brought to an instant stop, trembling in eveiy wheel, while a hot perspiration of steam covered its surface. After being carefully sponged of! and stimulated with small coals the miserable locomotive was again set iu motion. This lime the mule bieked it with such terrific violence as to break its funnel short oil', aud to smash its head-light. Moaning with pain, the locomotive was once more sponged, and its wounds bound up with sheet-iron. At this point several ladies left the amphitheater, being unable to witness any longer so brutal a spectacle, but the inhuman owner of the locomotive ordered time to be called, and the combat to be renewed. The mule waited till the locomotive was running at an estimated speed of sixty-seven miles an hour, aud then delivered his final kick. The hapless locomotive was hurled some thirty feet from the track, and was taken up with its boiler ruptured, its eccentrics dislocated, aud its connectiug-rods broken. It breached its last steam in a few moments in great apparent suffering, and tie mule was declared the victor. A more revolting spectacle tins probably never been witnessed in any Spanish bull-ring. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that we have eclipsed in the nineteenth century the worst barbarities of liome arid Madrid.