A Kentucky Mule

The well-to-do farmer oí republicaD proclivities was In Washington looking tor pie for the next three years and a half, not so much for dessert as íor a steady diet during that period, and whlle he was looking around he fouud time now and again to talk a bit on other subjects, says the Washington Star. One evening it was mules. "111 be doggoned," he said, "if I haven't got a mulé out home that ought to have the championship belt for kicking. Why, by zucks, one morning I tried to make that defn mulé haul a cartload of rocks from a'creek about tfalf a mile to the stable and he Just wouldn't stir a leg. All he would do when I tried to make hlm go forward was to move the other way, bo to beat Mr. Mule at nis little game I took him out of the shafts and turned hlm head on to the cart and started him up. Tfaen he wouldn't move either way, but just stood still and began to kick. Not a one-legged kick, either, but the real thing with both feet, and, gee whillikens, how he did launch them out into the atmosphere. I was sure I never would get him now, for I couldn't get near him; but all of a sudden I noticed that every time he kicked he kicked so hard that he eouldn't hold on to the ground with hiB fore feet, and so dragged himself about a foot or two, according to the ground he was on. That gave me an idea, and I Just stood by and when he showed a dlsposition to quit I nagged him a little and he went to kicking agaln; and 111 be blamed if he didn't get that cartload of rocks to the place I wanted it at mighty near as soon as if he had just hauled it there in th frst place and made no fues about it." One or two men coughed a short cough, but when the Ke&tuckian looked around they eeemed to have recovered from thelr pulmonary attack. "Isnt that scar on your forehead where he kieked you once?" inquired one of them. "Not exactlly." "I understood som one to ay so," sald the party with the cough. "Somebody's mistaken, that's all. How It happened was that one day I was coming into the front gate and the mule was bout 100 yards away, up at the other end of the big yard in front on the house. My hound made a break for him, and as the mule whirled to run away he let one leg fly at the dog, and the force of the kick, missing the dog, was such that the shoe flew off and whizztng through the air took me a clip over the eye aa I stood at the gate watching the two animáis, and carne mighty near aettling my earthly accounts richt then and there. You see, a muie's shoe Is hardly as Hght as a lady's slipper and when it Is hurled 100 yards through the air it is just the kind of a thing yoo ought to stand aside for and let it have as much room as it wants."