Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 132, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1914 — SOMETHING TO SAY FOR MULE [ARTICLE]

SOMETHING TO SAY FOR MULE

Traveling Tobacco Man Made a Study of Spanish With a Distinct Object In View.

"Before returning from my first trip to Cuba I improved my Spanish by diligent study in order to inform a mule in his own language just what I thought of him without any confusing equivocation,” said a traveling tobacco man. “This mule was one that I rode on a tour of some tobacco plantations. The people from whom I borrowed the mule said that it was an animal, of tireless energy, tenacious disposition, and marvelous speed. “I had no sooner mounted the beast titan it showed a disposition to canter far in advance of my party over hills and through fields until I realized suddenly that I had practically lost the others. "J spoke sharply to the mule and tried to rein it In. Instead of slacking pace the animal went faster. “I spoke more sharply still and reined harder. Same result. “Raster and faster went the mule. It galloped on through forests, open country and startled villages. I might have been galloping yet, a kind of permanent John Gilpin, had I not uttered, wholly by chance, a word at Spanish profanity that the mule might understand.

“What I yelled was the Spanish for ’Whoa!’ It stopped the mule like magic. Throughout the trip I had been yelling ’Git up’ without knowing it, while sawing at the reins. “But that mule heard a lot of unintelligible Spanish from me before I left Cuba.”