JUDGE PITMAN'S PET.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 131, 19 October 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

JUDGE PITMAN'S PET.

(From the Philadelphia Bulletin.) Judge Pitman, a short time ago, bought a pet lamb for the children to play with. It was a pretty good-sized lamb, and strong and vigorous, but the Judge said he preferred that kind, because the children would be less likely to hurt it. On the day that it came home they turned it out into the front yard, where it strayed about, nibbling the grass, while the Judge tied up his geranium. Mrs Pitman had the children in the house, and she was reading to them from a book a description of the characteristics of lambs. The account said : " The lamb is one of the most playful and innocent of animals. So kind and meek is it that its name has, for centuries, been the synonym of gentleness and sweetness of disposition. It never injures any one, and when it is attacked, it always suffers humbly and in silence. There is something so beautiful about the gentle little animal that" . Just at this point Mrs Pitman was interrupted by the voice of the Judge coining from the yard. It sounded as if he were in distress of some kind. The whole family flew out upon the porch, and there they saw that pet lamb, whose name was the synonym of gentleness, engaged in butting the judge. It would butt him iii the rear and knock him over, and then it would butt him on the legs, and batter him on the ribs, and plunge its head into his stomach, and jam its skull against his chest. When he ro8« it butted his shins, and when he stooped, over to rub them it butted his head. Then it butted him generally whereever a chance presented itself, and when it had doubled the Judge all.up under the Norway maple, it butted down three rose bushes, butted a plaster garden vase to fragments, butted two palings off of the fence, and danced off down the street, butting at tree-boies, the hitching posts, aud the northwest wind. Mr Potter finally knocked it on the head with a club, and brought it home to the Judge, and subsequently, when they had the hind-leg for dinner, the Judge observed to Mrs Pitman that from the manner in which that lamb cut, he should believe that it was born during the war of 1812, and that it was. in fact, a terrific old ram. Then he said he should go down and see the man who sold it to him for a lamb, and bang him ■with a club.