Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1893 — FOR THE CHILDREN. [ARTICLE]

FOR THE CHILDREN.

story of two horse friends. 1 will tell you a little incident that came under my observation when I was taking my vacation last summer. I stopped at a farm house and the farmer was the owner of a pair of chestnuts horses named Doll and Jack. He had raised them from colts, had always stabled and driven them together and they were consequently much attached to each other.

Last summer he turned them out to pasture and while wandering around the fields I noticed the incident. Doll has been blind several years, but she never betrayed it by her gait when traveling. In the pasture she would sometimes become separated from her mate and as soon as she discovered it she would commence to search for him. Sometimes she would whinny and ho would respond to her, when she would go directly toward him and when she found him they would rub their noses together. At other times Jack would not answer, but would stop eating, raise his head and watch the course his blind mate would take—back and forth across thepasture, each time turning toward the left and nearing the fence at each turn. Frequently she would stop and listen. If she was nearing the mischievous Jack he would stand perfectly still, but if she was some distance away"he would stamp his feet two or three times when Doll was listening. She was always sure of finding him, though sometimes it would take an hour to do it, and then they would go away, side by side cropping the fresh grass. When they went to the spring in one corner of ilie lot to drink, Jack always led the way, and he would stay besides the trough and call to his mate until she stood beside him and both would drink 7 together. One day a terrible racket was deard in the pasture, and. it was kept up 60 long that one of the men was sent to see what it was all about. Doll had gotten one of her feet caught in the 3pokes of an old wagon wheel that lay in the pasture. She stood very still and quiet in the trap into which she had walked, but Jack was thrashing around the pasture and neighing as though he had been hired to rouse the neighborhood. Doll was released while Jack stood by and watched the operation with apparent delight that was manifested with a wild gallop around the lot wfyen she was once more free. —[Utica (N.Y.) Observer.

FIGHT WITH A WHARF RAT. Wharf rats are, as you may or.may not know, much larger than the ordinary rat, and I lately saw an enormous one that had been killed under pecular and exciting circumstances. A young man who lives in a flat in Boston, fully three miles from the nearest wharf, was standing before the basin in his bath-room washing his hands, when he heard a noise as of something moving around in the little closet under the basin. Stooping over, he opened the door, when out jumped an immense rat. It was so large that the gentleman at first thought it was a cat, the light in the bath-room being dim. The rat jumped into the bath-tub, and the jontleman climbed upon the marble slab around the wash-bowl, and called for his mother to bring him a weapon of some kind—“to kill the biggest rat in Boston,” he said. Finally his mother brought him an iron carpet-stretcher with a handle six feot long. She opened the door just far enough to thrust in the weapon, after b-.ing assured that the rat was still in the tub. “And then the fun began,” said my friend when he told me the story. “The moment I picked up the carpet-stretcher the rat was on the defensive. It was getting dark in the bath-room, and, I lighted the gas, and the instant I did so the rat gave a little squeal and jumped upon the edge of the tub. I struck at him, but missed him, and he seized the handle of my weapon and clung to it with his teeth until I could hardly shake him off. When I did shake him off he jumped for me. I was still on the marble slab, and when he landed on it I jumped into the tub. When I struck at him the second time he dodged the blow ind made for me again, squealing as loud as a young pig. I didn’t auppose that anything in the shape of a rat could make such a noise. The families living in the flats above and below ours heard him distincfly, and came to ask what it all meant. Quite a crowd collected at the bath-room door, but I warned them not to open the door. ‘ ‘The rat and I changed places three times before I could hit him, and then his rage was something terrible. He squealed louder than ever, and buried his teeth in the handle of my weapon. I shook him off, and he tried to jump up to where I was, but he fell short. It was wonderful how he dodged my blows, and I narrowly escaped being bitten three or four times. Finally I pinned him down in a corner with the'iron teeth of the carpet-stretcher, holding him so he could not escape, but he" fought and struggled and squealed just as long as he could, and he died with his teeth fastened in the handle of my weapon. “The bath-room presented a gory appearance. There was blood everywhere. The rat was almost as large as a woodchuck, and he bore marks of age.” ‘ ‘But how did he ever get into the closet under the basin?" I asked. ‘ ‘That mystery will never be cleared up in full,” was the reply. “There was a big hole in the floor around the escapepipe of the basin in the closet, and he bad evidently made his debut through that hole. I think he must have come from the wharf through the sewer pipes, -but just how he brought up in that closet J don’t know. I do know that he was there and on the war-path, and a more formidable foe I never want to encounter -within the narrow limits of a bath-room. * —[Harper’s Young People. There are 186 me* and 186 women kr the * New Hampshire Insane Asylum.