Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1912 — HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAPPENINGS IN THE CITIES

Goat That Leads Sheep to Slaughter

K ansas city, mo—The goat is not a beautiful animal in the face. Ho hasn’t a sweet disposition. He Isn’t playful. He won’t cuddle. But he has his uses. Frank E. Essex of a local grain and milling company, who raises thousands of sheep and goats on his farm near Raytown, says a goat is the most contrariwise animal ever invented. Everything goes contrary with him—like Mrs. Gummidge. But like Mrs. Gummidge he has a pretty good heart if you can get on the right side of him. Mr. Essex has one particular goat op his place that is the best and the worst goat that ever lived. Sometimes Mr. Essex gets so allfired mad at him that he longs to take a club and kill him. But qvery time he raises hi* hand to. slay him he thinks of the many kindnesses the goat has done him, and his heart relents. The goat, Mr. Essex admits, is not pretty to look at. He is bald, he has a wicked eye and his whiskers are full of cockleburrs. His disposition is so mean that he spends ajl his. time

thinking up things to do which hii perverse mind tells him Mr . Essex doesn't want him to do. "But, really, I hadn’t ought to knock that goat,” Mr. Essex said. “Sheep, you know, haven’t a lick of sense. If it wasn’t for that goat I don’t know how we’d ever get them into a stock car. But the goat knows how. Frankly, I don’t believe he does it to help me—l think he does it because he knows the sheep are going to the packing house to be made into broth, and it fills his wicked heart with gladness. “Anyway, this is what he does: When the car is placed and the chute run down to the pen he takes the lead and marches up into the car, the sheep following. He marches all around the car and back to the dooh where he stops. There he places himself in such a way as to block the exit, leaving only enough room for the sheep to enter. They crowd in until the car is full, and then the goat leaps nimbly out and we shut the door. “If you could see the wicked gleam in his eye when he has thus trapped his trusting followers and saved his own skin you would appreciate how nearly human is his duplicity. "Some time, when I am vexed with him I suppose I shall Bhut the door on him and let him go to his deserts. If I don’t get his §oat sooner or later he will get mine."