My Mule's Menu

...The tune he whistled seemed to speak The wood-flute cadence of the Greek...

...When I released him in his own pasture, I reported to his owner the chief item of his lunch for that day with the request that he keep a close watch on the mule and learn if the poison ivy had any visible ill effects...

...For three hours Nathan continued to graze, and when we returned home, he appeared just about as hungry as he had when we started out...

...wild rye...

...Johnson grass...

...When I turned it loose, it sprang back to its original position as a bent strip of tough rubber...

...For a half hour with bated breath I watched Nathan stripping that five-foot post of every shred of ivy leaves and greenish berries...

...Nature had strewn Nathan's lunch by the roadside and the ample rainfall had kept it fresh and crisp...

...wild lettuce...

...But how very slowly and cautiously Nathan moved I I am sure that we had not gone a hundred yards together before my mule knew that I was a tender-foot...

...lespedeza...

...Golden Alex-ander...

...I reached for the top of a nearby persimmon tree and called on a long limb for assistance...

...When I looked at the plant he was devouring so greedily, I almost gasped for breath...

...The book locked in his fingertips Seemed bursting with apocalypse, And like a god in deft disguise, A dream swept sudden in his eyes Like beauty's august fire that blows Breaking the crimson brain of the rose...

...When he reached for the lespedeza, he drew me flat on my stomach...

...I could not move him a single inch out of his tracks...

...The beggar-lice he would not pass by...

...My complaining hips insisted that I walk and lead my mule...

...These are the ,ones that Nathan seemed to find acceptable to his appetite that day: great ragweed, known as bullweed...

...horseweed...

...He was twenty-two years old, and I his senior by twenty-seven years...

...I kicked and raved and roared, but my mule was wholly oblivi- ous to all my actions...

...Then in a flash I caught his ruse, Hearing the raastle of his shoes, And knowing by their silver whirr: Herbes, the heavenly messenger...

...cowbane...

...I began to worry how I should manage to pass one if it perchance approached...

...He was insensible to hard thumps...

...He was mine only for a single day...

...Seeing my imaginary car round- ing a curve, I jerked on the reins and pulled as hard as I could to the right...

...A tall, bony mule with a prominent spine is almost equal to a thorn tree for one who has been an utter stranger to such a vehicle so long, especially if he goes forward bareback, as I did...

...I found no difficulty in leaping on his high shoulders at the first attempt, but it was with much physical pain that I retained my lofty situa- tion...

...Fortunately for me no automobile appeared, and as usual my worries were in vain...

...My self-respect and my pride rose up indignantly...

...honewort...

...We had a mile to travel and I did not care to be thus interrupted on my journey...

...white-topped aster...

...bristly crowfoot...

...I talked and worked diligently with him until my strength was gone, and Ioo T H E C O M M O N W E A L May 29, I929 then I slipped to the ground which was no short distance away...

...Then I shouted to the full capacity of my voice, kicked as hard as I could, wrapped the keen persimmon limb around his body...

...My bridle reins were short...

...It was the latter part of July when farm crops are laid by and the farmer boy draws a breath of freedom, and sometimes a seat at a baseball game...

...It took pre-cisely six minutes to move Nathan to the right-hand side of the road to make room for my automobile to pass...

...It was a very narrow road we were on, with its vegetable frame caving in toward the centre...

...goldenrod...

...At the last stroke he lifted his huge head, grunted serenely, and while munching the tasty lespedeza clover, encouraged me by taking one or two short steps...

...Perhaps no shorter than the standard reins, but Nathan's neck was illegally long...

...His name is Nathan...

...A louder cluck and a stronger kick, and I sensed some-thing under me begin to stretch...

...When I stand in the smoke of this hated plant while it is being burned, the fumes carry their poison as perfectly as the green leaves and stems do, and I come away with enough of it to cause me to break out...

...broom sedge...

...water parsnip ; upland boneset...

...I had nothing left but a bare backbone seat--the most uncomfortable place I have found during the last thirty years...

...The more Nathan ate, the more empty space he seemed to have to fill up...

...Poison ivy l This coarse, vile plant had matted a fence post from top to bottom and the veteran vines still stuck up two feet higher...

...After wrestling with him for ten minutes longer I had him directly across the road, and he was so long that while his mouth was biting out the tops of tall horseweeds on the right side of the road, his stiff tail was heating the sumac bushes on the other side l So I decided that in the event of an approaching automobile, I would jump for my life and run a safe distance away, so that if the mule and car collided he would not fall on me...

...The poison ivy he seemed to enjoy best of all...

...He paid no attention...

...So, after all, shall we learn that poison ivy, that most hated of all the common wild plants, has its uses in the scheme of natural progress ? Encounter on Main Street I saw a traveler on our street With aeons flaking from his feet, Shod with the shoes of cataclysm...

...Judas tree...

...Thirty years had stacked their proceedings between me and the last mule I had jumped astride, and curiously enough, it was on the same road that we traveled together, and with the same objective--an old farm split in two by the Chickamauga Creek...

...The leaves rubbed off, I gave Nathan a rap that belted his belly, but he ate on as if his body were paralyzed...

...All along the way Nathan reached out for tasty bits of green vegetation, and twice his moist lips accidently touched and wet my bare arm...

...I decided to stand by and witness the first animal that I could remember seeing devour a plant that is so poisonous to my own flesh that even when I walk among its vines wearing thin leather shoes, it poisons my feet...

...Besides, it was Sunday, and so my mule and I enjoyed a peaceful time together...

...broad-leaf uniola...

...greenbrier and blue vervain...

...young black locust...

...tick trefoil and red clover...

...I again came into possession of the leather reins and my machine grunted forward...

...May 29, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 99 MY MULE'S MENU By ROBERT SPARKS WALKER H E IS almost as tall as a camel--large, bony, strong, gaunt, with heavy-set jaws and a will power that knows no such thing as submission to human reason...

...trumpet creeper...

...Then I gathered Johnson grass, great ragweed and red clover, all of which are favorite food plants of sane horses and mules, but Nathan refused to quit the ivy for any of them...

...Narcissus...

...Virginia creeper...

...Any person who is familiar with plants will not marvel over Nathan's list of rejected, especially the Golden Alexander, water parsnip, honewort and cgw- bane...

...I repeated the ceremony but my efforts failed to set the machinery into motion...

...When he finally came to a few growths of lespedeza that clung so closely to the ground, he went for it as if he were starving...

...common primrose...

...Now here was something far more interesting than the objective of my bareback ride...

...He ate the primrose, Poor Joe and wild lettuce rather sparingly...

...My mule now in the middle of the road, I decided to practise up so that I should be prepared...

...So in my skull's parenthesis I said: What shall I make of this...

...I carried a few sandwiches and a jug of cool water for myself...

...joepye-weed...

...But why he sought so eagerly and ate so hungrily of poison ivy I cannot explain, unless his system was in such a condition that it required the very elements that poison ivy contains to bring his health back to the normal mule standard...

...Who out ol mirth's immortal host Was this extravagant young ghost ? Not blowsy Bacchus nor bow-legged Pan-- Nessus...

...I looked to see if the entire machine was starting~ and observed that the tail was actually coming with us l Then I knew for a certainty that we were really leaving...

...partridge pea...

...It seems a coincidence that he chose sixteen varieties for food and rejected an equal number...

...Even then my arms were far too short to hold them comfortably, and so I just let him keep them...

...The hat that sheathed his golden head Was armored ardor of the dead...

...And, since I thought I didn't know him, Immune, I trapped him in a poem...

...Vegetation grew luxuriantly about the roadside, because the no-fence law had been in effect long enough to keep the browsing cattle away...

...I told him so in the plainest language that I knew, emphasizing it with a few more kicks...

...I kicked and yelled excitedly, as I imagined that I might do in order to escape an unsuspected speeder coming upon me...

...I glanced ahead and saw the earth commencing to slip slowly beneath me...

...I beat, I kicked, but my mule chewed solemnly on...

...ERNEST HARTSOCK...

...I pulled on the leather reins...

...It was like pitting my strength against a railway engine...

...For the moment I had the public road completely blocked...

...I called his attention to it with vehement language, but he seemed to be very deaf and chewed on...

...His shadow was an agate's prism, And, woodpecker's telegraph, His cane tapped a staccato laugh...

...When my arms come in contact with it, the poison penetrates my shirt sleeves and raises blisters with transparent tops on my flesh...

...Finally I gave up my trip and let him graze by the roadside, and while he ate most greedily, I listed the plants that he chose for food and those that he rejected...

...Poor Joe...

...I was determined to see if it were at all possible to move him out of the way...

...white-top...

...I pushed on his head toward the centre of the road and succeeded in bending his neck awry...

...When I was ready to start, I clucked to him and nudged him simultaneously in the sides with both heels...

...The plants Nathan rejected were: Solomon's Seal...

...So I sang to myself: Ali's well for menm A poet has found the gods again...

...In a few days, blisters rose up on my bare arm which Nathan had accidentally touched with his poisoned saliva, and each day for a week the report came to me that Nathan had never seemed quite so spry and that he was still in possession of his usual good appetite...

...Only a few automobiles traveled this rustic bit of highway...

...The first healthy growth of clover by the road- side he stopped and collected...

...Satyr...

...And when I looked behind, I discovered I had not succeeded, because Nathan's rear portion ex-tended in a warped position, still blocking almost half of the rustic road...

...poison ivy...