The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-02-12
CdIk Of the Gown
Items Gathered
In UaIRs and CaIks.
THAT LIAR AGAIN.

over IN a SeciuCeQ spot OF SeOSHIck
| county lies a lonely grave. Over it is
significant epftaph- The unfortunate citi-
zen who calmly reposes peacefully beneath
the sward and sand burrs and other vege-
tation has a tragic story of his uutoward
and untimely demise. Red-eyed and tear
stained friends spoke of il as a strange
manifestation Of Providence, his taking of.
To the average law-abiding resident il
would appear more cogent and apt to say
it was a strange manifestation of indigo
hued imbecility, and the victim himself the
chief performer. Many years ago he and
his family, along with a party Of emf
grants from the erudite east, were taking
a wagon train across the plains. One
Sunday one of his mules got sick and
baked the procession.S The long-eared ami
NAL Ghe quadrupedD coughed badly and
showed signs of epizootic, or jack grippe.
possibly. Anyhow. the man boosted that
he could cure him all right, and shot off
for the nearest village for some veterinary
medicine. He got an armful of powders,
enough to fit out the regular army. Once
back at the camp he emptied all the pow
ders in a piece of newspaper. Then he
carefully folded the sheet of paper en-
closing this prescription until it was in the
form of a nice cylinder-shaped tube, the
two pounds of yellow tinted powder on the
inside-of the paper, and the intent being
to locate it on the inside of the mule.
But fate decreed otherwise. The stricken
animal was pulled and prodded on to his
feet and leaned against camp wagon to
think and groan and to plot dire ven
geance on his well-meaning physician.
The latter may have been up in mule
skinning and wearing out his religion in
vitriolic profanity, but there were some
few things about materia medica and
therapeutics which he did not know. The
crowd gathered around the one-ring spec
tacular drama with bated breath, and it
had Jared better with the man if he had
bated his own breath a few lines. He
too the long folded paper tube containing
about two pounds of powdered ruin, placed
the one end in the mouth of the chocolate
colored mule and the other end in his own
mouth. His plan of campaign was to
blow hard and fire the whole charge down
the unsuspecting aesophagus of the pa
tient but deadly mule He was a blow
hard all right, but at the wrong end
Just as one Of the party was about to say
three in counting that far as a signal
to open his bellows and let go the charge
the mule coughed- That is about al there
is to the story, except to say that the
whole magazine of saffron-hued horse
tonic found different resting place than
was intended. The whole layout was blown
by the force of that mules cough down
the aiimentary canal at the other end of
the speaking tube. Two pounds of asinine
cure-al settled calmly among the interior
works of the man, while the other went
right on coughing, and perhaps let loose
horse-laugh just by way of dramatically
closing the comic opera and keeping or
thodox the unities of the play. Anyhow
the man went away behind a tree to lie
down and cough up. The last part weak
ened under the mellowing effects of the
first part, and he kept right on lying down
After awhile he got so he could swear a
little softly to himself, and then they
poked long horse-syringe down his wind
pipe and tried a Iforce pump and stomach
pump combine on his case, but it was no
use Then at nightfall, just as the rosy,
feecy, sunset clouds were gamboling over
the horizon he quit the game, and saving
an empty stomach and hollow sort of a
IareWeH 10 those who would miss him
next day, he moaned out his last and the
psychic in him wandered off somewhere
over the sage brush and tumble weed
prairies and away to the foot hills of the
far-off beyond where arrangements are
always made and ready to take care of
mistakes of Mother Nature, who pe.=:=t
on banking their lung power against that
Of spawned and consumptive mule They
all attended the funeral and gently laid
him away beneath the cactus and prickly !
pear roots and on the piece of barrel stave
which they planted at his head for tomb |
stone someone wrote with piece of char
coal:
He had blowed of how he'd cure him ere
We put him to his rest,
But the mule stood pat and anted, for he !
blowed the last and best!'