The mule, explains Billings, is half horse and half jackass, and then comes to a full stop, nature discovering her mistake. In deliberately mangled spelling the humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw delivers short essays and aphorisms on animals, courtship, séances, fashion and folly, each built to end on a dry punchline.
Classic American cracker-barrel humour of the 1860s and 1870s, still quotable. Download the free EPUB.