Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1880 — An Army Incident. [ARTICLE]

An Army Incident.

The country had few more efficient servants, during the war, than the “unwept, unhonored and unsung” mule. Occasionally he was self-willed and troublesome with his heels. But that was his emphatic protest against the unsympathetic handling Pf white teamsters. A negro seldom had any trouble with a mule, owing to a mysterious affinity which adapted each to the other. Again and again we have seen a negro make one or more obstinate mules start that white drivers had exhausted in vain their patience and all their profanity upon. Though a grave animal, the mule was pndific of fun. At the most serious crisis he insisted on joking. An incident, illustrative of this peculiarity, occurred the morning on which Grant assaulted the works of Vicksburg. A regiment, lying on the exposed side oi a hill, had tired away all of its cartridges. Two soldiers were detailed tc bring a supply. They went to the ammunition wagot} in the rear, and strapped two boxes of 1000 ‘*6Bs” over the back of a male. Starting for the front, one soldier led the mule while the other propelled him with a whip, from behind. Just beyond the breastworks, it was necessary to pass over a rise of ground wbioh ran for a dozen rods in full view of the enemy, and then terminated in a hollow and safe place. The' two soldiers and the mule emerged from the breastworks on a run. But when on the top of the rise, and not a hundred yards rroin the enemy's fort, the mole stopped, threw out his heels and stood stock still.' The soldiers persuaded with whoops and blows. They pulled and pushed; but the beast fixed himself to that spot as coolly as if it had been his favorite baiting-place. Perhaps ah inveterate humorist, such as Theodore Hook, would have taken in the fun of the scene. The soldiers didn't; for bullets were whizzing about their ears. They couldn't nm, for the cartridges were needed. Screaming, one tugged at the bridle, while the other pounded the flanks. Suddenly, the bridle slipped over the mule’s ’head, and, with a toes of his heels, the animal started on a gallop and ran right into the regiment. He was caught, unloaded and tied to a bush. When the regiment fell back, he was left~standing as an oat-post, and fell into the hands of the enemy. Youth's Companion. *

- The typical American of the highest order, will—so the English Journal oj Science tells us—be in the near 'future a union of the coarse and fine organizations; the solidity of the German, the fire of the Saxon, the delicacy of the American—sensitive, impressible, readily affected through the avenues of influence, but trained and held by a will of steel; original, idiosyncratic, learned in this—that he knows what not to do; with more of wiriness than of excess in strength, and achieving his purpose not so much through tfife absolute quantity of his force as m its adjustment and concentration. A house built in 1639 still stands in Dedham, Mass., and is the oldest in N*v England. It is beautifully situated under heavily branching elms, with a moas-covered roof., Much of the original furniture, 240 years of age, still remains, and has been in the possession of one family, named Fairbanks, during all of that time.