BEAT MULE WITH A ROPE.
Humane Agent Arrests Boy on a
Charge of Cruelty.
While in the vicinity of Eleventh and Harrison streets yesterday afternoon W. H. Gibbens, field agent for the Humane Society, heard a whacking sound as if someone was beating on a barrel. When he turned a corner he discovered the source of the noise. George Stokes, 17 years old, driver for a planing mill at Twentieth and Cherry streets, was in the street holding onto the bridle of a mule. In his hand he had a one-half-inch rope about two feet long, on the end of which was a large knot. He was belaying the mule over the head with the knotted rope.
"What's the matter here?" asked Gibbens.
"Dern mule won't pull," he said, out of breath. "Whack -- whack" went the rope.
"Do you think you'd pull if someone stood right in front of you with that instrument of torture lamming you across the face with it -- and you had no shoes on, either, on this smooth pavement?"
Gibbens made the boy get in the wagon. He got in beside him and with a little coaxing "Maude" stepped right off, all right. He drove to No. 4 police station, where Stokes was booked for cruelty to animals. He gave bond for his appearance in police court tomorrow.
