AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 232, 29 September 1881, Page 4

AN INFERNAL MACHINE.

The facts v>c~e these: — Mr Skid's neighbour kept a goat, and that goat had often got at Skid and butted him two rods, end over end, and he hated that goat profusely. But the neighbour -wouldn't keep the goat shut up, and so Skid invented a machine to slay the goat. It was in the form of a man bending down to pick up his hat, but in the body was a spring of tremendous power. 'From the hip pocket of the figure waved a red handkerelief that was the target to draw the goat. When he butted it the spring would fly and throw the goat a big distance. The machine was gotten up in very elaborate style and looked just like a man. It was perfect erough to dereive any goat. And it cost Mr Skid 7odols. But he didn't brgrudge the money so long as it fetched the goat. And he took the macYne and put it out in his front yard ■where the goat could see it, and then he letired to his house and waited to see the fun. He waited about two hours, and then his son came in and told him that the goat had swallowed an old hoop-skirt the night before and it had got tangled in his bowels and slain him. And of course Skid was terribly mad. But the machine was not wholly wasted, for the boy took it and put it on the outside of the circus tent so it looked like a man just starting to crawl under, and a policeman who saw it ran and hit it with his club and ■was surprised to see the club fly forty feet into the air, while his arm ached like fury, and then a stalwart circus man ran up and kicked the thing and ■was picked up twenty feet away with his leg broken in two places. And when Jie got over-, his surprise he said he'd give that man. a geasoa ticket if licM

ten now lie did it, as he'd like to work the same racket on the old man of the girl he was courting. But the machine couldn't be found, the boy having, in the excitement, taken it home. He is going to sell it to a country editor, to be pointed out as " the rcau who wrote the article you object to. You can proceed to kick him." — Boston Post.