The New Bloomfield, Pa. times. (New Bloomfield, Pa.) 1877-188?, 1878-12-17
THAT HOG OF MINE.
BY A. noaa RAYzER.


admitted when we bade her never mind
the change from dollar bill which we
handed her In payment for seventy-five
cents worth of labor, " People amt to be
judged too hard for the places they're
born in" We were trying to keep house
and keep up appearances on the salary
of five hundred dollars which the prin-
cipal storekeeper in the town paid me
for my services, and if Atlas had half
as much trouble in keeping the world up
when men were always doing more than
ten hours work day, 1 can only say
that the ghost of Atlas has my sincere
sympathy. The little account book in
which we kept our record of receipts
and expenditures slowly became more
terrible in our sight and our dreams
than collection of stories by the late
Edgar Allan Poe would have been, and
we dreaded its contents more than we
did those of q certain great book which,
as good church members, we should
have been seriously concerned about
We resolved upon many stringent econ
omies, but no sooner had we put one of
them into practice than some unforeseen
but absolute household necessity came
up to balance it.
We devised various plans of increas-
ing our income, and even sunk so low
as to write number of verses which /
sent to certain popular magazines, with
a request for check as an equivalent.
The only check / received was upon my
own aspirations toward fame and for
tune, for those poems came back with
such unanimity that the (printed) let
ters of declination which accompanied
them gave us material for years. sup
ply of lamp-lighters.
Matters went on in this way until
they became worse, for by method pc
; culiar to young married people our fam
lily came to consist of three people
instead of two, and the newest member,
though by far the sweetest and best of
the trio, soon became much the costliest.
He could not walk, so we had to set up
d CdlIIdRC lOI hlIlt lib hlClO appearance
brought with it a new bill from the
family physician) and he needed more
new clothing before he was born than
his mother and had owned between us
since we had been married.
One evening, soon after my wife had
recovered from the newcomers advent,I
sat moodily over our little account book,
thinking of how delightful it would be
if figures could only lie, when Cynthia
abruptly exclaimed
" / have revelation"
$50 have l." L replied, pointing to
the account book, "a whole book of rev.
streets in it,"
Don't be irreverant," said Cynthia,
&C. am in earnest. Let's keep a pig"
We have one," said 1, pointing to
the baby, who was rapidly resolving a
bottle of milk into a hollow void.
"Be sensible, Sam, there's DEAR"
expostulated Cynthia. "You know what
mean,-a hog,-a four-footed animal
that is killed when he is big enough and
fat enough, and that is turned into
hams, and bacon, and lard and things.
We throw away enough of table-scraps
and leavings every day to keep pig
happy and fat"
YOU'RE an angel, my DEAR" said I,
"and we will have pig"
And we did. There were several
breeds of pigs In the county, and was
at first at a loss from which of them to
select my own private porker. l eX-
planned the cause of my indecision to
Cynthia, and her womanly intuition
came at once to my rescue.
"Get the thinnest one you can find,"
said she. "The thinner he is, the less
he will cost, and the more there will be
of him to fatten. If we get nice fat
one, his weight won't increase enough
to pay for the trouble of feeding him."
Thanking heaven for giving me such
wife, and determining to knock down
the first man whom heard saying that
women were incapable of logic, en-
quired among my employers customers
and soon learned that the thinnest pigs
in the neighborhood belonged to an
Irishman who never fed his swine, and
who lived several miles from any forest
where the animals could find nuts and
acorns. 1t was held, by some, that this
mans pigs were thin because they had
to exercise too much in getting their
food; others, however, declared that