Judge — November 4, 1916 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

gave him two or three black eyes. He narrowly escaped arrest for attempted kidnaping. Now, I believe in humanity. I think we men ought to be kind to the poor dumb beast. Poor dumb beasts have only us to look to for protection, and we should discharge our moral duty by being kind to them. But I think that, in the main, our kindness should be restricted to negative acts. I would never, for instance, take into my house a poor, helpless, cold, hungry skunk. Not that I am hard-hearted; but I ju: wouldn’t. Nor do I with cheerfulness give myself to be a pasture for the homeless mosquito. I do it, but not because I want to. I can’t help it. The same applies to fleas and alli- gators. If I met an alligator on the street, and it looked at me as if to say “I’m hungry—take me in, or let me take you in,” I should not stay and parley with it. Nor with a flea. Expe- rience has shown me that fleas are much easier to acquire and infinitely harder to get rid of than alligators. If you are afflicted with an alligator you can shoot it, or put it on the rail- road track, or something; but for that hen. But once a rat got into the kitchen, and Thomas distinguished himself. He got rid of that rat by the simple process of running away from it. When last seen Thomas was heading in the general direction of the horizon, with the rat behind, gaining at every jump. I have never heard of cither of them since. So when I am inclined to be humane to dumb animals, I pause and reflect. I look at the homeless dog with his cargo of not at all homeless fleas, and I kick it into the next county. Then I humanely give it Christian burial. I do not create asylums for sick and otherwise incapacitated cats; I chloro- form ’em. My soul is not moved to pity when I see a fly ‘Struggling in the web of a spider. Nay; I am filled with joy, for I see one more dis carrier off the map. Th finds no champion in me; the downtrodden tiger in the erie moves me not at all; the ill goat moves me, but only farther away, to windward. I murmur “Safety First,”’ and go my way rejoicing. no one can shoot a flea. The only way to get rid of a flea is to take a bath in kerosene. I knew a man once who did that. He tried it once only. In fact, there was only the one time to try it. He was smoking when he entered the bathroom, and when the fire-department finally got him out, he was still smok- ing only more universally. Yes, a flea is a hard dumb animal to be kind to. Then, there isthe cat. This beast is alluded to in the many works on the subject asa do- mestic critter. It is domestic, but not domesticated. It is par- ticularly domestic at mealtimes —ours was so domestic that she knew when the milkman came as wellas I did. But that cat never was domesticated. It sat on the hearth and purred, as do all well-regulated cats the books. It partook of bowl of milk three times a day with apparent content. It was a great hand to rid us of ob- jectionable animals, too. It fearlessly attacked a ten-year- old hen who wandered into our garden one day, and killed it. The hen wash liveenough - = to crawl, and was toothless with age. I had to pay my neighbor eight dollars Magistrate (who has taken a dislike to prisoner)—Six months at hard labor. Counsel (astounded statute doesn’t permit more than sixty days 1c But the Magistrate—The prisoner broke the law—I'll stretch it comicbooks.