Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-10-01
SELF-UNLOADING.
A Seafaring Mans Adventure With
a Craft Which He Did Not
Exactly Understand.
Hartford Courant.

Hartford Courant.
In 1850 whaling mate from Nantucket
was fitting out for the mines near our back
door in Sacramento, Cal He was a tall, Sc
rious large featured man, probably the head
of family at home. He was particular in
his outfit, and was a long time getting ready.
After about fortnight he came down street
with big mule in tow that sold cheaper, he
said, because there was no sufficient mate Tor
him in the country. There was considerable
sloping deck room on him and great capacity
for pack saddles and the hanging on of camp
and mining furniture. The Nantucket mate
had tent, a gold-washer, two picks, two
shovels, frying pan, a box of salt meat, do
bread, do clothes sort OF long fire arm and
a little demiiohr of choice liquor that l re-
member, and doubt if recollect half he
had, for he was great provider. The mule
was good looking one. He stood grave and
still as church, among the chips near the
wood pile at our back door while the mate,
an expert rigger, with plenty of voluntary
help, was packing. was just then laying the
soup-bone keel of dinner and cleaning up the
kitchen after breakfast
There was one pack-saddle and one riding
saddle on the mule, strung along aniidships,
I remember
Not much mule was to be seen between ears,
tail and hoofs when the mate had knotted
the last tie of his hampers, Delayed the spar
line, shipshape, and swung his long, leg like
aderrick from our big chopping block over
the animal all ready to make sail He had
On pair of weighty Spanish spurs, and
some declared afterward that the mate
would have got safely under way if be had
not grazed the mules belly with the fukes
Of one of those anchors But this will never,
probably, be known. In one instant the
mass Of hard wooden ware, with the bags,
was in fearful commotion, and shot up into
the air. l thought the whole concern would
tumble down through tho canvas roof OF our
kitchen and spill the dinner of forty people.
But l guess the mule had canvaSSed the
whole business otherwise. As the dust set
tied and our wits gathered from amaZement
and alright, the mule, clean as he was born,
was seen calmly cropping weeds that grew
where we flung slops; the mate, with surprise
and bruises struggling for mastery ON his
face, Was gathering himself out of the wood
pile A spare boot parted from its fellow,
first fixed his wondering gaze, and smell
from the wrecked demijohn helped restore
his senses to bis quarter OF an acre Of scat
tered property. He said simply: 81 guess
I'll sell that mule" and We beard afterward
that he chartered an OK team fr his
freight.
The reader mustuDdeTstand thata buck
ing mule or horse can develops perfect hinge
in his back that is not reckoned in ordinary
equine osteology. I have thought since that
this mules back hinge must have come be
tween the saddles, for at the pGSt-u1odtem
examination Of this.parttcufar mining expe-
dition it was discovered that the girths Of
the saddle found upon the ground were
neither broke, untouched. nor united, but
simply shed or shucked off OF score of OBJ
servers no one saw exactly how this was
DONE the movement w1s so rapid and such
dust was flying The mule was for minnie
the invisible center of storm cloud, from
which radiated, as from an explosion, the
Fifty or sixty articles have enumerated
How Things Appear to the Insane.
One who has been Insane, in Popular Science
Monthly.
The first that IFeneutT of my attack was
while was riding m a railroad car. 1t
seemed to me that the passengers in the for
ward part were getting up amateur theetri-
Gals The fact that this did not surprise me,
nor appear at all out OF place, Illustrates one
curious feature of insanity, and that is its
close similarity in many respects to dream
ing. 1t is well known that the strange phan-
tasmagoria attendant upon most Of our
dreams never strikes US at the time as ct all
astonishing, illogical or contradictory, be-
cause the critical faculty In sleep is partially
and perhaps wholly dormant. And so also Is
it in insanity And as q sound Or a touch
will suggest or give direction to an ordinary
dream, so everything that occurs within the
sight or hearing of an insane man affects him
in like manner. Also, he has no more control
over his words and actions, when the in
sanity is complete, than q somnambuliSt.
And when patient comes to himself, after
having been insane, he feels as though he had
been having a long and, sometimes, a very
unpleasant dream
Some of my decisions were of a fTightful
character, and resembled nightmare more
than anything else; but more often they
were by no means disagreeable. Of course,
It seemed strange to me afterwards that
could have been carried away by such alb
Burdities. At one time thought that the end
of the world had come and the day of judg-
ment was 1T hand. This was somewhat re-
markabla. because I had not for years been
believer in srriptural prophecies relating to
those two events Nor had I any faith in tho
doctrine that there Is q hell Of fire; yet in
imagination visited that place of torment
and witnessed the tortures of the damned
without, however, getting scorched myself.
Some strange conceits, that had come across
in books, occasionally suggested material for
my mind to work on saw men whose souls
believed had been taken from their bodies,
leaving behind the intelligent personal iden-
tity-an Rlea suggested by a character de-
scribed in Bulwer's Strange Story" Again
I thought that demons occasionally reani-
mated human bodies after death; and this
fancy 1 must have got from dramatic work
by Bishop Coke entitled saul" in which the
evil spirit sent, to trouble that unfortunate
monarch, terminated and took possession of
the body OF o priest whom Saul had slain.
I mention these instances as serving to
show the dEeam-Eke character, OF insanity.