Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 248, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1913 — Wanted: Somebody to Get the Secretary’s Goat [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Wanted: Somebody to Get the Secretary’s Goat

PHILADELPHIA. —That Jolly, roaring tar, Josephus who won the navy portfolio on account of his varied and tempestuous seafaring career in the Carolina hills, wants somebody to get his goat. He has one he doesn’t know what to do with. This goat was the mascot of the super-dreadnought Connecticut and has brought disgrace upon himself and shame upon the navy. The Connecticut was in drydock at the League Island navy yard near Philadelphia. Sambo (which is the goat) was given indefinite shore leave that he might get a change from his usual liet of beans, pork, ship .biscuit

After sizing up the general situation in a leisurely way. Sambo hopped down to the bottom of the drydock. be began scratching himself, ag>dnsb one of the shoring blocks that supported the port side of the battlesjrip. There was a nail in it and he g*t more scratching than he needed. In fact, he became grouchy about it and proceeded to administer to that block a series of vigorous butte, which sounded to the marine sentry overhead like the chirping of a pneumatic riveter at work on the frame of a skyscraper. The marine did some hurry-np scouting and called out the deck guard. They shinned down a rope as fast as a marine can shin down a rope, which isn’t very fast, and placed Sambo under arrest. The sober truth of the matter is, the ship was in danger. It would not have taken much force to dislodge that block and but little more, applied somewhere else, to have made the Connecticut topple over on her side.