PRESENCE OF MIND.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2132, 22 January 1880, Page 3

PRESENCE OF MIND.

“ It has been quoted as an instance of extraordinary presence of mind that when tlic keeper of the Scarborough Aquarium, was attacked recently, by the octopus, who fastened ~ his tentacles around his leg, that ‘ lie hit upon the ■expedient ’ of slipping Ids boot off, upon which the animal stuck to his boot for 20 minutes, and then dropped it, as if, though there may be nothing like leather, calf was better. But the intelligent advice of the keeper, however praiseworthy, was not original. A similar instance of intelligence is said to have occurred in Borrowdale, Cumberland. One of the simple farmers of those parts beheld .for-the-firsttime a saddle in Keswick market, bought it, and returned home in triumph, having put it to the use for which it was intended —only, unfortunately, his heavy wooden shoes stuck in the stirrups and he could not get out of them. His sons were for putting him into the stable, hut his wife, a person of great natural intelligence, suggested that they should take the saddle off, which was accordingly done, with her husband on it, and ■Hie was kept in the kitchen all the ’winter carding wool. When Ins youngest son, however, who was a student of St. Bess, came home for his summer vocation, lie exclaimed, “ Why on earth did yon not take father’s shoes off ?” The happy suggestion was acted on at once, and has long supplied in that district an argument in favor of universal education.”