Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1910 — A DISRESPECTFUL ANIMAL. [ARTICLE]

A DISRESPECTFUL ANIMAL.

Miss Caroline and Mi» Matilda Bargle lived in an old-fashioned house with a lean-to shed, the roof of which ran nearly to the ground. Returning from church one day, they noticed on approaching their dwelling that the churchgoers ahead of them paused in passing, and gazed upward with interest and mirth. A moment later they saw why. Their neighbor’s blUy-goat bad escaped, mounted the lean-to to the ridge-pole of the kitchen roof, and with one end of a flaring circus poster streaming banner-like from his jaws, stood outlined boldly against the sky. a chamois on a mountain peak, calmly contemplating the Sabbath procession. Miss Matilda laugihed. Miss Caroline did not. “The abominable beast!” she gasped, deeply scandalized. “I never saw anything so—ao disrespectful!” < The goat is indeed a disrespectful animal. He is no respecter either of property or person, as many an individual held in honor by mankind has ruefully discovered. Admiral Evans has related with pride, as a worthy achievement, his triumph in his earlier days over a refractory goat on ship; board, which refused to yield the milk required for a sick man. After it had baffled everybody whose proper task it was to secure the milk, the captain sent for Evans, and directed him to go and get it. Evans respectfully intimated that he had not supposed "milking goats to be part pf the duty of tk navigating officer;" but the captain thereupon asked it as a favor, and he undertook the task. With a little warm water, much persuasion, some firmness, and a recollection of the ways of certain “darkies” with misbehaving cows, he succeeded, and was unmercifully chaffed by his comrades on his success. Indeed, he was far from happy in it until he had taught his method to a marlneand was assured that he would not have to keep on milking for the rest of the voyage. He was more fortunate than another distinguished man, Horaee Greeley, who was a conspicuous failure as “a milker of goats, although he was bred to the farm and Evans to the sea. When, in accordance with Mrs. Greeley’s theories of diet, goat’s milk was desired for their little son, they attempted to keep a goat In their New York premises, and Mr. Greeley undertook to inilk it. His ignominious tussles with the creature became a source of delighted mirth to his neighbors. One saw from his rear windows the complete overthrow of the great editor in his back yard, while the goat remained victoriously chewing the latest edition of the Tribune, which had fallen from Mr. Greeley’s pocket In th® contest. He relates that he called down to him, gleefully: “Well, Mr. Greeley, nanny, there, hasn’t much respect for editors!” Sitting on his hat, and with one foot in an overturned barrel, Mr. Greeley, in his high, squeaky voice, called back: “No matter, no matter! The man is nothing and the opinions everything. You see she appreciates the Tribune!"