Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

     About noon yesterday a freight clerk at the Central depot thought he would like to have a good wash and a nice swim, and he proceeded down the yards to a slip, looked all around to see if a policeman was in sight, and then shed his linen and made a dive. He left his clothes on some boards where he had a fair field to look that the boys didn’t sly in on them, and he came out of the water happy and refreshed. He looked for his pants, and they had disappeared. He looked down the yards and saw a big dog playing with them. The canine would toss the pants aloft and catch them as they came down, and then he would pretend that they were “game,” and the sound of his clashing teeth could be plainly heard. The clerk started for the dog but just then several women, looking for an excursion boat, came in sight, and he had to dodge around a lumber pile. When the women had passed he began whistling at the dog, but he might as well whistled at a barn. Then he tried coaxing, and when that had no effect he hurled a club. The dog picked up the pants and disappeared around a corner of a wheat elevator, where he was safe. The clerk put on his shirt and vest and started out, but he heard a passenger train coming in and had to get back. Pretty soon he noticed a small boy down by the elevator, and he called to him. Some more excursion women happened along and hearing cries they approached the lumber. The clerk put his head out and warned them that he was insane and they halted. The boy came up, two workmen approached, and finally a crowd of forty stood gazing at the approach for a long time. Some of the men armed themselves with clubs and flanked around, then threw stones over the pile to scare the man out, and before any one knew who it was and what had occurred, the crowd had grown to a hundred. The clerk finally made them understand what was the matter, and when his torn and battered pantaloons were brought up he slipped into them and skulked down along by a freight train, swearing at every jump.-ex.