A CHAPTER ON MULES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1355, 17 November 1877, Page 21

A CHAPTER ON MULES.

The word "mule" comes from the Greek, and signifies "to stop." Like multiplied by like produces like. Grasshoppers multiplied bygrasshoppers produce famine, and potato bugs multiplied by potato bugs produce a rise in the price of yeaat. But when you try to multiply mules by mules they don't multiply, and hence the word mule. He has no more sense than a stone jug, and will eat anything that contains nutriment, and he don't care whether it be one per cent or ninety-nine. Thejmule is a good worker, but he ia liable to strike, and when a mule strikes, human calculation fails to find out any rule by which to reckon when he will go to work again. You never can really know whether you like a mule or not till you have heard him sing. I have been through the New York Stock Exchange, and have spent part of a day in a boiler factory, and have been on one or two Sunday school excursions for children, but I never knew what noise was till I heard a lot of army mules -bray. The mule has one more leg than a milking Btool, and he can stand on one leg and wave the other three rourfd in as many different directions. ' One* "of 'the "dead certainties about a, mule is that he is surefooted, especially with- his hind feet. He never misplaces them. If he advertises that his feet will be at a certain spot at a certain time, with a sample of mule shoes to which he' would call your attention, you will always find them thereat the appointed time. — Boston Globe.