My father, for the greater part of his life, was in the steamboat business. He was an official of a company operating packets on the lower Ohio River. The headquarters of the line was the gathering place of pilots, captains, mates, clerks and engineers—a collection of quaint types and homely philosophers. I was a small boy but I still remember it as though it were yesterday, when on a summer afternoon the talk drifted to the subject of mules. Somebody ventured the opinion that the mule was a stupid animal.
Instantly our champion romancer spoke up:
“Don’t you believe it,” he said. “The average mule has got more sense than the average horse has got. What’s more, every mule has got something that no horse ever had—and that’s imagination. Why, I know of an instance when a mule was killed by the power of his own imagination.
“It happened forty years ago when I was a young shaver, on my uncle’s farm up the Tennessee River. My uncle owned an old gray mule. He had the mule on pasture in a ten-acre lot. In the middle of the lot was a log crib full of popcorn.
“Along about the middle of July came the most terrific hot spell that ever occurred in this country. The thermometer went to 118 in the shade and stayed right there day and night for three weeks. At the end of the third week, on the hottest day of all, the sun set fire to the roof of that corncrib and it burned to the ground. Naturally, the heat popped all the corn and it fell three inches deep, all over that ten-acre lot. The mule thought it was snow and laid down in its tracks and froze to death.”
§ 288 A Way Out of the Difficulty
Whether we expect to go there or not, stories about Heaven almost always have an appeal for us. Here is one which has done service for a good many years:
An exceedingly rich man who had been noted all his life for taking a good and a loving care of his money, passed away. In due time he knocked at the Golden Gate and craved admission to the Celestial City. St. Peter received his application. The Angel Gabriel was called in, also, to pass on the petition.
“Your name,” said the Saint, “is not entirely unfamiliar to us. We have heard of you while you were on the earth. I ask you now to search your mind and see whether you can recall any deed ever done by you in the flesh which, in your opinion, entitles you to enter Paradise and dwell among the blessed. Under a new ruling the record of a single noble act will secure admittance.”
The millionaire gave himself over to intensive thought.