p. 11 | AN INTELLIGENT MULE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 13, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 46.

AN INTELLIGENT MULE.

Gave Warning of Danger in a Mine.

The mine mule knows a thing or two quite as well as does the army mule. In one of the mines in the Pittsburg district an ever-patient mule proved himself possessed of an almost human sense of coming danger. A chamber had been closed on account of gas, and the men were thinking of what that might mean, when suddenly there came a clatter of hoofs, and a mule appeared—its long ears quivering, and its intelligent eyes full of terror.

It gave a shrill bray, and then was gone down the entry, broken traces flying after it. The men, with one impulse dropping picks, made a headlong dash for the open air. With scared faces other miners joined, and while they were wondering what it all meant, a dull, deep explosion went rumbling through the hollow back of them, followed by wave on wave of noxious vapors. When the bodies of the few poor men who had been hopelessly entrapped were recovered, another was tenderly carried out with theirs—that of the little gray mule that sounded the warning.—Leslie’s Weekly.