Super-Normal Strength.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 24 April 1914, Page 8

Super-Normal Strength.

Mr. Ernest Spencer, who was for many years the Parliamentary representative of my native parish (said David Christie Murray, in his "Hecollections"), was an infant schoolfellow of mine, and on one birthday, his father made him a present of a small donkey, and we two took the beast to Bob Pearce's to be shod. I can see the great, broad-shouldered, hairy farrier at this minute, as if I saw him in a picture, with his smoky shirt thrown wide open at the collar, and his breast as bearded as his chin. When the .small beast was trotted into the farriery the grimy giant laughed aloud. He stooped, and placing his great palm under the donkey's belly, he raised the animal in one hand, and poised him at the ceiling, swaying him here and there as if he had been a weather vane in a high and varying wind. I suppose that the donkey was a little donkey, but I am sure that he was only an average little donkey, and that not one man in a British regiment could have performed Bob Pearce's feat.