SUPER-NORMAL STRENGTH

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8784, 14 July 1914, Page 4

SUPER-NORMAL STRENGTH

Mr Ernest Spencer, who was for many years tho Parliamentary representative of my native parish (said David Chfistie Murray, in his “Recollections”), was an intant school-fellow of mine, and on one 'birthday ■ his father made liim a present of a small donkey, and we two took the. beast to Bob Pearce’s to be shod. I can see the great, broad-shouldered, hairy farrier at this minute, as if I saw him in a picture, with his smoky shirt thrown wide open --at the collar, and his breast as, bearded as his chin. When the small beast was trotted into |he farriery the grimy giant laughed aloud. He. stooped, and placing his great palm under the donkey’s belly, hb raised the. animal in one hand, and poised him at the ceiling, swaying him hero and there as if he had" been a weather vane in a high and varying wind. I suppose that the donkey was a little donkey, but 1 am sure that he. was only an average little donkey, and that not one man m a British regiment could have performed Bob Pearce’s feat.