Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1883 — A Disaster. [ARTICLE]

A Disaster.

Mr. Mulkittle was called laway from home to unite in marriage two young people to whom he was very much attached. “Let me go with you,” the boy im- J plored. “Do let him go,” said Mrs. Mulkittle, with an exhibition of a true mother’s wilHugness to allow the father to assume entire responsibility, for a short time, of a troublesome youngster. “He cannot go,” exclaimed Mr. Mulkittle. “There will be no children present and I don’t know that any are desired. I will be gone several days, entirely too long for a boy to remain away from home.” The boy went away disconsolate, and Mrs. Mulkittle arranged her husband for the journey. the boy had allowed to remain in the lot presented the youngster with a large, shaggy dog. The animal “took” to the boy, and when he had been fed on biscuit and preserves, he seemed to feel well contented. When Mrs- Mulkittle saw the dog,-she was horrified, and commanded the boy to drive him into the street. The youngster, on a pretense of obedience, conducted the animal around the house, and let him up stairs, into the “spare-room.” Here he would pccagifinaHy pay him . visits, bringing such delicacies as a dog’s appetite naturally craves. Mr, Mulkittle had not gone more than half of his journey, when he received a dispatch that the marriage was indefinitely postponed, so boarding an incoming train he reached the city about twelve o'clock at night. “I’ll slip up stairs,” he mused when he reached the house, “and come down to breakfast in the morning. It will be a pleasant surprise, a jbke as it were,” and the fleshy minister shook with quiet laughter. He opened the door with his latch-key, and tip-toed upstairs. When he entered the room and began to feel around for a match and the lamp, he thought he heard a low" growl, but after a few moments he decided that he must have only fancied the noise; however, he did not continue his search for the lamp, but took off his clothes and approached the bed. Just as he kneeled down, a frightful roar and the overturning of a chair made his hair stand up like the bristles on a brush. A dark object leaped at him, and with ay ell the good man rushed from the room. While descending the stairs he was conscious of being pursued, and more than once did he realize that he was losing fragments of bleached raiment. Mrs. Mulkittle shrieked and flew into the hallway just as her husband and the dog struck the floor. She, of course, thought that her husband was a burglar, and while he struggled with the dog, whose teeth had long since been worn off by r‘av ; enous exercises at the bone yard, she seized a “stick horse” that one of the children had hitched in the hall, and gave the minister such a “crack” over the head that he howled with pain, and then, realizing the situation, which a woman never does until all possible damage has been done, shrieked and calted for help. The boy, awakened by the noise, ran into the hall and easily reduced the ferocious animal to submission. Mr. Mulkittle looked at himself and said: “ Why do you stand there looking,at me when you sec I’m torn all to pieces ?” “But she couldn’t see that you are torn all to pieces if she didn’t look at you,” the boy replied. “Drive that devilish dog out of here,” demanded the minister. “If it hadn’t been for some bf your foolishness this wouldn’t have happened.” “An’ if you’der let me gone with you the dog wouldnt’erbeen here.” “Didn’t I tell you to hush?” and the reverend gentleman sought his room. — Arkansaw Traveler.