And the humane man, where, O, where was he? Ask of the winds that far around with fragments of hat and coat tail strewed the barn floor.
“Shoot the horse.” said a faint voice from the upper part of the barn, and every eye was turned in that direction. The humane man was up there, clinging to a cross piece. He had evidently gone up the ladder which led to the hay loft, a little ahead of the horse, and as he clung to the cross piece, his coat tail gone, and the vital part of his pantaloons and some skin gone to that bourne from whence no pantaloons seat returns, his bald head covered with dust and cobwebs, he was a picture of meekness.
The crowd got the horse into another stall, head first, and put bars across, and the humane man came down from his perch. Seizing a barn shovel, and spitting on his hands, he asked his friends to wait and watch him curry off that horse just a minute for luck. He said he only wanted to live just long enough to maul every rib out of the animal, and if he was forgiven for interfering in somebody's else's business this time he would try and lead a different life in the future.
They put a horse blanket around his wounds and led him home, and he has given the boy five dollars to pound the horse an hour every morning for the next thirty days. You can't make that man believe that a horse has any intelligence.
RELIGION AND FISH.
Newspaper reports of the proceedings of the Sunday School Association encamped on Lake Monona, at Madison, give about as many particulars of big catches of fish as of sinners. The delegates divide their time catching sinners on spoon-hooks and bringing pickerel to repentance. Some of the good men hurry up their prayers, and while the “Amen” is leaving their lips they snatch a fish-pole in one hand and a baking-powder box full of angle worms in the other, and light out for the Beautiful Beyond, where the rock bass turn up sideways, and the wicked cease from troubling.
Discussions on how to bring up children in the way they should go are broken into by a deacon with his nose peeled coming up the bank with a string of perch in one hand, a broken fish-pole in the other, and a pair of dropsical pantaloons dripping dirty water into his shoes.
It is said to be a beautiful sight to see a truly good man offering up supplications from under a wide-brimmed fishing hat, and as he talks of the worm that never, or hardly ever dies, red angle worms that have dug out of the piece of paper in which they were rolled up are crawling out of his vest pocket.
The good brothers compare notes of good places to do missionary work, where sinners are so thick you can knock them down with a club, and then they get boats and row to some place on the lake where a local liar has told them the fish are just sitting around on their haunches waiting for some one to throw in a hook.