Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1899 — ELEPHANT BLOCKED THE WAY. [ARTICLE]

ELEPHANT BLOCKED THE WAY.

Engllxh Clergyman While Cycling Has a Strange Experience. This story comes from Birmingham, England: The clergyman of a neighboring town was returning home on his bicycle. He had been preaching in an adjoining village, and this means of locomotion was the one most suited to his tastes and to his convenience. The night was dark, and the rays of the reverend gentleman’s lamp did not pierce far into the gloom. Suddenly something seemed to loom large, vague and ominous before his eyes. He had a short sensation that he was rushing on to some unknown doom; there was a collision with something soft and of shape most curious, and away flew the machine one way and the cleric the other. When the reverend cyclist had pulled himself together he heard noises, and there was a gleam of a lantern near at hand, flickering as though indicative of much agitation. Through the darkness came a sleepy-looking man, rubbing his eyes. From him the cleric discovered that there was an elephant stretched across the rather narrow road. The animal had been as awkward as “My Lord the Elephant” of Budyard Kipling creation. True, he was not blocking a pass, but he had fallen in the road on his side, and had stopped there, refusing to move. He belonged to a circus, did this trunked obstruction, in course of transition from one town to another, and since his fall had been left in charge of two men with lanterns, who appear to have fallen asleep. Beyond a few quiet and qraint utterances, the elephant did not mind. What the front wheel of the bicycle thought about it is not known.