Tales of Strength

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1933, Page 18

Tales of Strength

Maximiß ; Emperor of Home, was so strong in body, that he drew loaded •wagons with ease. He struck out the teeth of a horse with his fist, and by a kick broke its thigh. He crumbled stones between his fingers, and cleft young stout trees with his hands. Caius Marius, nominated to the Eoman Empire by the soldiers,' is said to haVe stayed with his fourth finger a cart drawn by horses, and, to have drawn it backward in the same' way. With single fingers of his two hands, acting against one another, he could break strong cords twisted together. The Emperor Aurelian is stated to have been of great stature, and of such marvellous strength that in one engagement with theSarmatians he slew no fewer than 49 men.

Froissart writes of a companionknight to the Earl of Foix, one Orlando Burg, who, being hurried for fuel one cold day, descended a long flight of ■teps,, and, finding asses loaded with wood, in the court, seized the largest of them, burden and all, and never stopped till he had laid ass and all from his on the fire. In French chro-

nicies we are told of . a man named Barsabas, a soldier of Louise XlVs guards, who, when the King's heaveoaeh of state stuck so fast in the road that all the oxen and horses that could be yoked to it were unable to pull it out, lifted it out of the place. A man was about to fight with Barsabas. When tho two were holding out their hands, the strong fellow Beized the fist of the other, and, by a gentle squeeze, utterly disabled him from using the limb. Barsabas could snap horseshoes in two as easily as wafers. He went to a village farrier's, and asked for horseshoes. Several were shown to him. He broke them to pieces one by one with his fingers, saying that they were uselessly brittle. The farrier stared, but proposed to make stronger shoes. Barsabas took up the large anvil, and held it under his cloak. When the anvil was sought he set it down. Seeing such miraculous feats, as he thought them, the farrier, bolted with . the exclamation that the devil was in .his smithy. Barsabas once met his match, however. He entered a rope shop in Flanders, his native- region, and sought to pur-

chase some strong ropes. Several being presented to him, he snapped them hke pack-thread, and said, "They are very bad." "I will give you better ones," said the woman who was selling the articles, "if'you have money to pay for them." Barsabas produced several crown pieces. The woman took them and broke two or three of them as easily as Barsabas had snapped tho ropes. "Your crowns are as bad as my ropes," said the woman smiling Barsabas found a solution of the mystery of the woman's strength in the fact that she was his sister. They had not met from infancy.