AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 91, 15 October 1881, Page 4

AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

The facts were those : — Mr. Skid's neighboar kept a goat, and that goat had often got at bkid and butted him two rods, end over end, and ho hated that goat profusely. But the neighbour wouldn't keep the goat shut up, and so Skid invented a maohine to slay the goar. It was in the form of a man bending down to piok up his hat, but in tho body was a spring of tremendous power. From the hip pocket of the figuro waved a red handkerohief ; that was the target to draw tho goat. When he butted it tho spring would fly and throw tho goat a big distance. The maohine was gotten up in vory elaborate stylo and looked just like a man. It was perfect enough to deceive any goat. And it coat Mr. Skid 75d018. But ho didn't begrudgo the money so long as it letched tho goafc. And he took tho maohine and put it on in his front yard where the goat could see it, and then he retired to his house and waited to see the fun. He waited about two hours, and then his son came in and told him that the goat had swallowed an old hoop-skirt the night before, and it had got tangled in his bowels and slain him. And of course Skid was terribly mad. But the machine was not wholly wasted, for the boy took it and put it on the outride of tho circus tent so it looked like a man just starting to crawl under, and a policeman who saw it ran and hit it with his club, and was surprised to see tho club fly forty feet into the air, while his arm ached like fury, and then a stalwart circus man ran up and k.oked tho thing and was picked up twenty feet away with his leg broken in two plaoes. And when ho got over his surprise he said he'd give that man a soason tioket if he'd tell how he did it, as ko'd like to work the same racket on the old man ot' the girl ha was courting. But the machine could'nt be found, the boy having, in the oxoitement, taken it home. He is going to sell it to a country editor, to be pointed out as " tho man who wrote the article you object to. You can pioce3d to kick him." — 80.- ton Po3t.