The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-05-27
MULE AGAINST LIGHTNING.

MULE AGAINST LIGHTNING.
News comes from Mount Airy that
at the White Sulphur Springs a few
DAYS ago a mule was killing by light
ming.
This item is suggestive, limiting at
causes and effects which We wot not
of. Why should lightning kill a mule
how could-even lightning-kill
mule? The occurrence brings us up
short at the beginnings of things.
What a mule lacks as an entity in
the scheme of things he makes up in
temperament and in a personality
that is uncontrolled and unguessable.
He is by turns, long-suffering, patient,
vindictive; in action he typifies the
sloth or the cyclone. He is master
of surprises He strikes when no one
looks and his -deliverance is generally
fatal. On the other hand he takes
the buffetings of life or of an out
ragged humanity with an equanimity
which bides it's time. He has the
memory of an elephant, the savagery
of a tiger on the spring and the en-
durance of an Antaeus. Gracefully,
when his hind hoOfs are worn, mule
unless he be white-does occasion
ally die from old age. The white ones
would seem to evaporate, as there
lives not the man who has seen that
color dead. But for a mule to die
save from an Over-indulgence in living
is a thing that is worth a recording
i'm black letters on the roll of the
freaks of history!
Scarcely can we credit this Mount
Airy dispatch We detect sensation
in the theme and an ingenuity in the
cause assigned for the decrease. If
anything could kill a mule, it would
be lightning, but we would want the
ocular evidence of the fact. Lightning
is spirit of the air accustomed to
freakish tricks. Instances in which it
has danced through window, played
about the chandeliers above the board
and broken the Dresden tea-cup in the
hands of the mistress of the house
without further damage constitute old
tales. But that it should attack a
mule! Even for the bolts of Jove
himself is that rank impertinence.
"Blackgum agin' thunder" has long
been favorite expression of the
tragedies that lie between the conflicts
of powers omnipotent in their force
Beside the rucus that must have
ragged when lightning tackled the
Mount Airy mule that expression of
the ultimate disaster of war must
pale into insignificance. Lightning
is lusty, treacherous and "suddint ;"
more than all--but not more so than
a "muel." In fact "quick as light
ming is the only simile that can ex-
press the action of the beast himself,
when he decides to move. And, up
to the Mount Airy incident, we had
been inclined to give the advantage of
celebrity to the beast, rather than to
the bolt. 1t is with a sense of pain
that We record the undoing of our
strenuous backbone of the farm. The
incident points to a mystery that is in
the borning; it places another laurel
on the wonder-studded brow of the
genius of electricity. Hail, forked-
tongued child of the cloud who hast
done this thing and killed mule!
In fairness be it said, however, that
the mule must have been asleep. Wit
ness the fact that his partner of the
team escaped unframed Doing that
he might lure his victim in his reach,
doubtless the mule for once forgot
and really slept. In that moment of
his disregard must the lightning have
slipped up on him-but we venture
that it was not from behind!
Had it been so that the bolt at
tackled, even more quickly than it
could have struck, would the galvan-
lied heels of the mule have kicked it
writhing back into the cloud from
whence it came!
The fatal Mount Airy accident to
the contrary, our money is still on
the heels of the mule-the sleeper the
critter, the bigger the odds!