A MULE THAT COULD KICK.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 215, 18 July 1879, Page 2

A MULE THAT COULD KICK.

" Once a week," in its April part, contains a very varied assortment of matter, and makes up a capital number. Themoit amusing portion' is under the head of " Gleanings," and the following ia a good sample of the whole:— "' Speaking about mules,' remarked a

aii-footer from Harnett County, as ho cracked his whip at market/ I've got a mule at home which knows as much as I do, and I want to hear somebody say that I'm half a fool.' No one said so, and he wont on. I've stood around here and heard men blow about kicking mules till I've got distrusted. When you come down to kicking, I want to bet on my mnle. A friend came along and took dinner with me the other day, and, as he seemed a liitle downhearted, I took him out to see Thomas Jefferson, my champion mule. I was telling the good man how that mule wouid flop his hind feet around. He'd passed his whole life in the South, and had never seen a .4-, mule lay his soul into a big timeat kicking,'•;jT Well.' he continued, after borrowing some^ 1 tobacco,' I took Thomas out of the stable, and back'd him up agin a hill, gin him a cuff on the ear, and we stood back to see the amusement. It was a good place to kick his durndest, and what d'ye s'pose he did? In ten minutes by the watch he was out of sight. In five more we couldn't feel him ' v with a twelve-foot pole, and—aud—' Tha \ crowd began to yell and sneer, and the narrator looked around and asked, 'Doesany-. body think I'm lying;? Would I lie for one mule? Right here under my arm is a pound of tallow candles, which are to light the hole for me to go in after Thomas; and I got word not an hour ago that the hindfeet of a mule were sticking out of a lull thirty-nine miles as the bird fliesfrom where my mule went in! I'm shaky on religion, gentlemen, but our family never had a liar in it,'"

HEALTH AND PRISON LIFE,

Sir Robert Christison, the distinguished consulting physician on the prisons of Scotland, declares that the general prison of Scotland, that of Perth, is apparently the most healthy place in the world. He states" The healthiness of the general prison is almost marvellous. I have down to the present time inspected it as Government Inspector six times annually for 13 years past, and have very seldom indeed found more than one man and one woman in bed among 750 prisoners—once or twice no one!" In the common condition previously from such a number of prisoners a large sick ward would be occupied, He is most emphatic in his expressions of astonishment at the result. Similar expressions come from surgeons in England, and that they want' ,v to say of patients in their private practice " Oh, if I could have only had that case in prison, I could save the life." It may be said that the epidemics which ravage the populations under the rule of Baily bodies, vestries and the like do not now touch the populations in the prisons under care of the state. Epidemics rage aronnd them unless it be by some extraordinary accident, orculpablenegligence they escape. A prison surgeon of our model prison at Pentonville appeared to be in trouble of mind. He was asked if anything had happened, He had got a case of small pox in the prison ! The disease was then ravaging the courts and alleys in the vicinity of the prison, where as many as a third of the wage classes in some of them were attacked. But this by no means consoled him ; a case had no business to be in the prison, A case of cholera occured in one of the Scotch prisons, and there was an elaborate speculative report as to how such an extraordinary event could have occurred.—Social Notes.