Connecticut western news., 1880-04-14
THE FAT PASSENGER.
The "True" Story of Morgan, as teld
 by Hawkeye Burdette.

o"fAN1 4Ay AAAouItS, SlAO U1AC AtNb passenger, "is the home of the late la mented MT. Morgan. MT. Morgan, in his day, was goat rider of considerable celebrity. But he went back on the goat. Here is the print shop in which MT. Morgan printed a book, and told all about the bad habits, the deceitful tricks and the bad ways of the goat. He gave the frolicsome animal of the lodge away, bad. He described his amusements he told how he did it and what he called it. He just told all about 1t, and literally | took the goat by the horns, which, MT. Morgan averred, were not the only kind | of horns taken in the lodge.
 "The dejected animal brooded over his | wrongs. He felt that MT. Morgan's of fence was rank. It couldn't have been | much ranker than the goat, but the goat didn't think of that. He only thought ofrevenge. hadhisrevenge. Onesum- mer night the goat backed out of his closet, got out of a window in the lodge room and slid noiselessly down the lightning rod (we can see the same lightning rod few blocks farther on). That very night the doomed and recreant brother Morgan was out taking walk in the starlight. The great exposer strayed carelessly down one street and another, his hands clasped behind his back and his head bent in thought. As he walked, with an uneven gait, his back swayed to and fro with what an ordinary goat might con- sider Q challenging gesture. He did not look around, and so he did not see ter rible figure that followed him. A gloomy,
 threatening, fearful shape-a part of the night, but not of 1t. Now and then as 1t
 came close to MT. Morgan it would raise | itself up in the air with it's head bent
 down, as though in mockery of its vic
 tim's attitude, and for brief second it
 would retain this attitude, looking in the
 gloom like shadowy letter s with legs.
 Then it would let down a6d pause to eat
 circus poster, and having finished this frugal lunch it would hasten on after the
 doomed Morgan.
 By and by the traitor stood on the
 bridge over the Towanda. He folded his
 arms, crossed his legs and leaned easily
 upon the parapet. At that instant the
 goat ran up to short range, unlimbered,
 and went into battery, action rear. He
 strengthened himself up like a lightning
 rod, then he curved himself into an in-
 terrogation point, then he shot himself
 out straight horizontally and came down
 in one time and two motions.
 "He butted MT. Morgan. He only
 butted him once but once was all the
 bill called for. It was an immense suc-
 cess. The doors weren't open ten min
 utes before the house was crowded,
 standing room all gone, and the last man
 that came in had to leave his cane out
 side. The goats neck cracked like q
 torpedo with the concussion, and it is on
 the records of the lodge that he wore 8
 porous plaster on his back for the next
 two weeks. Nothing like it had ever
 happened in his family since his great
 grandfather hired himself out to Augustus
 Caesar for a Roman catapult
 "As for MT. Morgan, he was amazed,
 and pained and disappointed. Disap-
 pointed because he could not die right away and be done with it. He was at @
 loss to know just what had happened, and was surprised that no one else felt
 the shock of the earthquake. When he ] landed against the side of mountain,
 about four miles the other side of the
 creek, he began to realize the terrible , truth. He was seized with an intense sickening fear of all goats, and no won- : der. The next day, when he was stand ing at the mantelpiece eating his dinner, he laid his hand on his heart, which had been knocked clear up into the back ot l his neck, ar d took solemn oath that he } would go where he never again could see, : hear, feel or smell a goat-especially feel. MT. Morgan seems to have been 6 2 man who didn't have any too much re- 3 gard for the sanctity of an oath, but cir. cumstances assisted him in keeping his r VOW. He started to escape from the l presence of goats the next day.
 Naturally, when he hid himself from 3 the nod of the headstrong and erratic 3 goat, he disappeared from the eyes ot 3 men. He couldn't help it. Wherever 3 he found men, there were goats. If he slept in the stable, the goat was there
 breathing sweet perfume from his cash , mere locks. He found them on the : dreary mountain side, fattening on the : dried moss of centuries. If he went tc the crowded cities the goat, while he : solemnly chewed bits of twine and toma l to can labels, looked at MT. Morgan con 9 yivially, as who should say, Brother T Morgan, you has my eye' If he wen = out into the painless dessrt, the goa | met him and hospitably invited him tc f 'have cactus. And so he fled, speed 3 ing with wings of fear, and bones of ach
 ing memories to spur him On, far, fal l from the har1nts of men and goats Ant he never was seen again, and he never came back.
 : "This is the true story of Morgan's dis f appearance, for are we not here in the very village where he lived? Are we no g standing on the very ground where it al occurred? Do we not know since we T are here? It has been said that Nor u gan's fate was an awful one that may not be told. It has been said that the q Freeland Expected Masons ate him up f that they run him through straw cut [ ter; that they bought his boy tin horn :, that they told his wife his gun wasn' 2 loaded, and then buried him at lonely s spot in the dark forest, where two cross \ II