Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1874 — Did Not Take the Prize. [ARTICLE]

Did Not Take the Prize.

"Our county fair is just over; but Johnson's Cotswold ram did not take tlie prize that was offered for the best animal of that kind. Judge Pitman was -Chairman of tlie Committee on Rams, and lie manifested the deepest interest in Johnson’s ram; indicating clearly that if any sheep ought to take a prize that one ought to. Johnson’s ram was by itself in a pen with a high board fence, and before adjudicating the prizes the Judge he had better go in and make a close examination of the animal for tlie purpose of ascertaining the fineness of its wool, etc. As soon as the Judge reached the interior he walked toward the ram, whereupon the ram began to lower its head and to shake it ominously. Just as the Judge was about to feel the fleece the ram leaped forward and planted its head in the Judge’s stomach, rolling him over on the ground. Before the Judge had time to realize what had happened the ram came at him againand began a series of promiscuous butts, each given with the precision and force of a pile-driver. It butted the Judge on the back, on the ribs, on his arms, on his shoulder-blades, on the bald place on his cad, on his breast, on Ins shins; it butted bis nose, it butted his watch into a mass of loose cog-wheels, it butted his spectacles off, it butted his high hat into black-silk chaos; it butted him over into the corner apd up against the fence, then it butted four boards out of the fence, butted down another of the committee, butted three small boys into fits, butted tlie money-taker at the gate, and then fled out into tbe country, butting liarmlessly at the fresb air. The Judge did not distribute the prizes that day. When they collected him from various parts of the pen, they wiped the mud from his trowsers and the blood from his nose, and sent him home with a perennial stomach-ache and a determination to start after that wandering mutton the first thing in the morning with a shotgun.—Max Adder, in Danbury News.