Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1899 — OOM PAUL’S EXPLOIT. [ARTICLE]

OOM PAUL’S EXPLOIT.

When a Boy He Fought a Panther Sin-gle-Handed, and Won. Paul Kruger, who has been president of the South African Republic almost from its formation, evidently became a hero to his Dutch-Africans early in life. Like the Hebrew David, with his fadeless renown of victories over a bear, a lion and a giant when he was only a shepherd lad, the Transvaal chief enjoys among the Boers a popularity always enhanced by the memory of his fearless boyhood. When seventeen years old, Paul— a barefoot boy whose father was’too poor to buy him shoes—was driving home a borrowed yoke of oxen and cart, when the animals took fright at a large panther, and ran away. Paul’s little sister, -who had been allowed to go with him in the cart “for a ride,” was thrown out upon the ground, and the panther, leaving its pursuit of the oxen, was about to seize her, when the boy rushed forward and caught the beast by the throat. In the struggle that followed, he w r as terribly torn by the panther’s claws but he kept his hold with fierce determination until he choked the monster to death—and saved his sister. Wounded as he was and weak from loss of blood, he carried the frightened child home; but it was long before he recovered the remarkable strength which had been so cruelly taxed. More like Samson than like David in his encounter with the wild brute, he won with “nothing in his hand.” President Kruger to-day bears not only the marks of the great cat’s nails, but the character he first impressed upon his fellow-countrymen in that unarmed fight for another’s life. An English writer recently said of him, “Like Nelson, Paul Kruger never knew what fear meant.”—Youth’s Companion.