A STREET INCIDENT

Hokitika Guardian, 8 December 1925, Page 2

A STREET INCIDENT

One of lho.se “what might have been a serious accident ' eases brought to light a four-footed hero on ’lhursday morning in Victoria Street (states the “Auckland Star”). A large portable tar-boiling aonnraliu. used in street , Work, was being moved. In tin* shafts was a hav horse with a ridiculously inadequate tail. At the top of the steep hill which drops down from Kitchener •Street the apparatus halted. Smoke was coming out of the chimney, and , the tank was full of hot tar. Slowly it turned down the hill. Backing into the breeching, the short-tailed Lay felt his way cautiously down the road- , wav. which at that spot is bitumen- | covered and as smooth as a footpath. What weight there was in the Qar j boiler it would he hard to say. hut it | looked a ton. The wheels should luv.e been sprigged at ihe top of the hill, j but they were not. and the pressure was ten much for the hay: however, lie ! did not lose hi? head or his feet. I either. True to the instinct of the born shaftcr. the more weight lie felt the more he strained at the breeching. Half-way down, the outfit got on a distinct pace, and visions of a smash at tho bottom of tho hill, with Doling tar swilling about. Hashed before the onlookers. But they had reckoned with- . out the hay. Sitting down on his

haunches, he kept trying to get a hold with hi- hind feet, and for fifty yards or so lie literally slid down the hill, holding up the heavy vehicle behind him. How he managed to keep sitting upright with it would lie hard to say. but he did. and just below Lome St. he actually brought the swaying apparatus to a -tandstill, and one splash ot tar that -willed over the top of the tank showed what would have happened if the bay had not stood up, or rather sat down, to it. When lie pulled up he was Mowing a good deal and the stump of his tail was wagging a good deal like old Xor’-AA'est’s at the end of a steeplechase. “Did you ever sec anything cleverer?’ asked an enthusiast ie onlooker, and the man he addressed agreed that the City Council should :u Ica-t give the old horse a medal.