Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1881 — Mr. Warner on the Donkey. [ARTICLE]

Mr. Warner on the Donkey.

The best way of getting about Cairo and its environs is on the donkey. It is cheap and exhilarating. The donkey is easily mounted and easily got off from; not seldom he will weaken in his hind legs and let his rider to the ground—a sinking operation which destroys your confidence in life itself. Sometimes he stumbles and sends the rider over his head. But the good donkey never does either. He is the best animal of his size and appearance living. He has the two qualities of our greatest general, patience and obstinancy. The good donkey is easy as a rocking-chair, surefooted as a chamois; he can thread any crowd and stand patiently dozing in any noisy thoroughfare for hours. To ride him is only a slight compromise of one’s independence in walking. One is so near the ground, and so absent-mindedly can he gaze at what is around him, that he forgets that there is anything under him. When the donkey, in the excitement of company on open street and stimulated by the whacks and cries of his driver, breaks into the rush of a gallop, there is so much flying of legs and such a general flutter that the rider fancies he is getting over the ground at an awful rate, running a brew-neck race; but it does not appear so to an observer. The rider has tne feeling of the swift locomotion of the Arab steed without its danger or expense. Besides, a longlegged man, with a cork hat and a flying linen “duster,” tearing madly along on an animal as big as a sheep, is an amusing spectacle. —My Winter on the Nile.