The Portland daily press., 1865-07-25
Tuesday Morning, July rs, 1865.
For the Daily Press.

For the Daily Press. a
MULE STORY. aiagis4@ 4sjg-
Perhaps few people are aware how man,
thousands of mules have been employed in
the late rebellion. Quartermaster Meigs ad
vertises IN your paper many thousands of then
to be disposed of at auction in Washington
He says there yet remain probably, four thou
said Of the finest sir mule teams in the scorld
Twenty-four thousand of the best kind still
left, after all the waste and destructionl YET
of the sixty-six thousand men that Maine has
furnished for the war, perhaps few knew any
thing about the habits of the mule, and many
had never seen one until they went into the
army, s
"A member of the 29th regiment writing
from Savannah, gives the following incident
which came under his observation: a
''The evening we arrived on the ground we
had one of those mule exhibitions which are
SO common in our army. have made quite
study Of mule pranks, during my four years
of army life, and / thought had seen the end
OF all when saw mule drowned in the mud
atStaford Court House, Va. Then remem-
Der seeing mule team and wagon roll down
an embankment at Williamsport, Nd, SO fine
ly that one would have thought a tornado
was whirling them round. have seen mules
trying to dance on a slack rope (chain) and
trying to tie themselves up in their traces, &c,
but the other evening the great feat of the
war was consummated. was walking in the
rear Of one of the camps waiting for our teams
to come up, when l noticed crowd Of men
apparently hard at work at something,-it was
too dark to see what. They were laughing,
and yet their laughter was mixed with sort
of vexation, sounding as if they didn't like
the fun, but were obliged to make the best Of
it. Making my way through the crowd, saw
what looked to me like t,oo black cats fghtiiaq
under a bsudock bush. knew it could not
be that, and so looked sharper, and discovered
that the leaves Of the bush were mules ears,
and the cats mules noses; and as live there
were two mules heads sticking right up out
of the ground. The poor brJtes had tumbled
stern foremost INTO a well just large enough
for them to squeeze into, and had gone down
so far that only their noses and ears were to
be seenl The driver thought the mules had
euchred him finely, and informed the crowd
that they always IT. ytrs TO- get SUNNI triol1
played on him. The boss-wagoner, white
man, insisted however that he could ,chip the
mules, even at that game. So two men caught
hold of the ears, two more grabbed the nose
and as many more as could stand round the
well seized the harness, and away they pulled
1.-The men swearing, and the mules grunting.
The dumb beast was conoaered. The first
mule had no sooner got hs feet out Of the well
than he kicked himself free of his friends ana
fell back again. There he lay, looking uI
as contentedly as possible, as if to say; @pct
AEON that trick" But Yankee ingenuity proved
too much for linn in. the long run. A few
more efforts brought him out, and after him
the second; and instead of both being dead
the driver and wagon master declared that
they we're better for their trip down to China.
almost thought SO myself when 1 saw how
nImbly they obeyed the black chaps order
GHaw muleP English of it is,-"turn to the
left" A man of the 18th wooden nutmeg'
regiment moralized for the benefit of the crowd
as follows: II tell you them mules didn't
know that the 1st Division had arrived. They
thought they could jump down that well and
bluff the niger out of the. game. But they
didn't hold the bowers! We Yankees is toe
much for niggers or mules. tell you boys
never lead the ace till you know where the
bowers arel For getting euchred takes all the
courage out of man, and mule too"