A MULE KICKS A BEEHIVE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3061, 19 April 1881, Page 4

A MULE KICKS A BEEHIVE.

I was visiting a gentleman who lived in the vicinity of Les Angeles. The morning was beautiful. The plash of little cascades about the grounds, the buzz of beea and the gontle moving of the foliage of the pepper trees in the scarcely perceptible ocean breeze made up a picture which I thought was complete. It was not. A mule wandered on the scene. The scene, I thought, could hare got along without him. He took a different view. Of course mules were not allowed on the grounds. That is what he knew. That was his reason for being there.

While I was thus thinking, tho mu'e, which had wandered up close to a large beehive, got stung. His eyes lighted up, as if that was just what he was looking for. He turned on that beehive and took aim. He fired. In ten seconds the only piece of beehive I could see was about tho size a man feels when he has told a joke that falls on the company like a piece of sad news. This piece was in the air. It was being kicked at. The bees swarmed. They swarmed a good deal. They lit on that mule ernes tly. After he had kicked the last piece of beehive so high that he could reach it no more, he stopped for an instant. He seemed trying to ascertain whether the 10,000 bees which were stinging him meant it. They did. The mule turned loose. I never saw anything equal to it. He was enveloped in a dense fog of earnestness and bees, and filled with enthusiasm and stings. The more he kicked the higher he arose from the ground. I may have been mistaken, for I was somewhat excited and very much delighted ; but that mule seemed to rise as high as the tops of the pepper trees. The pepper trees were 20 feet high. He would open and shut himself like a frog swimming. Sometimes when he was in mid-air he would look like as if he was flying, and I would think for a moment he was about to become an angel. Only for a moment. There are probably no mule angels. A sweet calm and gentle peacefulnessperyaded When he had kicked for an hour, he began to fall short of the tops of the pepper trees. He was settling down closer to the earth. Numbers were telling on him. He looked distressed. He had always been used to kicking against something, but found now that he was striking the air. It was very exhausting. He finally got so he did not rise clear of the ground, but continued to kick with both feet for half-an-hour, next with first one foot and then the other for another half-an-hour ; then with his right foot only every few minutes, the intervals growing longer and longer, until he finally was still. His head drooped, his lip hung lower and lower. The bees stung on. He looked as if he thought that a mean, sneaking advantage had been taken of him. I retired from the scene. Eai*ly the next morning I returned. The sun came slowly up from behind the eastern hills. The light foliage of the pepper trees trembled with his morning caress. His golden kiss fell upon the opening roses. A bee could be seen flying hither, another thither. The mule lay near the scene of yesterday's struggle. Peace had come to him. He was dead. Too much kicking against nothing.—January Californian.