MORE LIVE-STOCK--A HORSE AND A PIG. WHICH IS THE NOBLER ANIMAL?
In order to live in the country, one must own a horse; in order to keep
house in the country, one must own a pig. In popular estimation, the
animal creation stand in relation to man in the following order--cows,
horses, pigs, dogs. For the existence of a large portion of the race of
infants in these modern days of tight lacing and slender limbs, a cow is
a prime necessity; for utility in transferring one’s self from place to
place between which there is no railroad, or if there is, and the
person’s life is precious in his own eyes, a horse is extremely useful;
for association in contemplative moments and suggestiveness of
comfortable ideas, a pig is very pleasant; for the higher enjoyments of
life, for the sports of the field and wood, the dog takes first rank.
I have already described the cow. My dog, like those of all my friends,
is the best in the world, and I bought the “love of a pig.” Pigs are a
highly intellectual race; they not only know on which side their bread
is buttered, but in which part of the trough to find the best-buttered
pieces. Reader, didst thou ever study the language of a pig--the
beautiful intonations of its various expressions; the grunt of welcome
at its master’s approach; the sharp warning to desist if punishment is
threatened; the squeal demanding more food, broken often into the most
piteous accents of entreaty; the cry of pain, or scream of rage?
Pig-language is a copious one, although the power to understand it is
given to but few of the human race. The expressions of a pig’s face are
most impressive; the eye speaks the enjoyment of a joke--twinkles with
fun, as we say; conveys an intimation of anger, or expresses scorn of an
underhand action or watchfulness against it. Who ever got the better of
a pig by fair means? Chase him, and see him provokingly keep half a
dozen feet ahead of you; try to drive him, and measure his obstinacy
even by that of your wife; endeavor to lead him, and make up your mind
to have a “good time.”
Our pig united many pleasant qualities and points of sagacity to a
gentleness and suavity rare in the race; he had an appetite that was a
joy to behold, and was as effective an appetizer as a gin-cocktail.
[Illustration]
The household was large, and swill consequently abundant, but piggy
never shrank from his duty; he seemed to feel that the reputation of all
pigdom rested on him, and, no matter how often the trough was
replenished, he was ever ready to renew his attacks. His sides were
puffed out and rounded like a ball, but he would stand with one foot in
the trough, and never desist till the last morsel was consumed. He was
as clean and white as a baby in a morning-gown, and would allow his
flanks to be scratched in the most gracious way, grunting gently the
while, and occasionally turning over on his side. He was altogether a
rarely sociable companion: so much for our pig.
In selecting a horse, there was one point I had made up my mind upon--he
must be gentle; he might be fast or slow, stylish or commonplace, but
kind in single or double harness, as the professionals term it, he
should be. My experience of horse-flesh has been varied and instructive:
I have been thrown over their heads and slid over their tails; have been
dragged by saddle-stirrups and tossed out of wagons; I have had them to
balk and to kick, to run and to bolt, to stand on their hind feet and
kick with their front, and then reciprocate by standing on their front
and kicking with their hind feet. I have seen more of a horse’s heels,
have known more of the intricacies and possibilities of a “smash-up,”
have had more bits of pole and whiffle-trees sent flying over my head
than falls to the lot of most men; I have been thrown much with horses,
and more by them; I have had them do nearly every thing they should not
have done, and leave undone all that they should have done. So
gentleness was the one prerequisite to a purchase, and many were the
animals I examined to secure this qualification, many the faults I
discovered; but I finally obtained the precise creature I wanted. He
was graceful, free, fast, stylish, and, above all, perfectly gentle--a
very family horse.
On the confines of Flushing stands a house about two hundred feet from
the road, and surrounded on three sides by a high hedge of _arbor-vitæ_.
At the front is a court-yard, and what was once a stately entrance, with
a carriage-drive round a circle, and a number of noble forest-trees; but
the grass has covered the carriage-road, weeds have choked the lawn, and
the trees spread their scraggy branches untrimmed and uncared for. The
dwelling is large, and has a deep piazza along the entire front; it
gives every outward appearance of comfort, but no family has occupied it
more than two consecutive months for many years. The house is haunted.
Many years ago an old French lady owned the place, and she had one
daughter--a beauty, of course--given to falling in love, equally of
course, or she would not have been French--and somewhat undutiful, as
the sequel will show. The mother, according to the ordinary Parisian
habit, wished to make a good match for her daughter; the latter,
according to the universal female habit, wished to select a handsome
husband for herself; the mother offered a wealthy and highly respectable
“mentor, guide, and friend” of sixty; the young lady chose a dashing,
devil-may-care lover of twenty-five. The parent dismissed the latter,
the daughter dismissed the former; the mother threatened to anathematize
if she was not obeyed, and, being disobeyed, did something of the
kind--what, among gentlemen, would be called “tall swearing.” The
daughter, who had learned the habits of American children, consented to
an elopement with her lover; the time was set, the hour arrived.
It was a bright moonlight night, the seventh of October, in the year
eighteen hundred and no matter what; a high wind was blowing, and
scattered clouds were driving rapidly across the sky; the young
gentleman at the appointed hour stood at the gate with a pair of fast
trotters and one of the lightest turnouts of Brewster & Co., of Bond
Street, having engaged a clergyman in the city of New York. Time flew
by, but he waited in vain. His lady-love had not failed of her promises,
however, but, after her mother had retired, and by her loud snoring
attested the profundity of her repose, she quietly descended the stairs,
opened the front door silently as the expertest of thieves, and stepped
upon the piazza. At that moment a heavy cloud passed across the moon,
and a fierce gust slammed to the door; fearing that her mother might
have been aroused, she groped her way hastily across the piazza, caught
the balustrade of the steps, and--walked off on the wrong side. It was
a fall of ten feet; with a wild shriek she pitched head foremost on the
bricks of the area.
The lover waited and waited, fearing let suspicions might have been
aroused, or resolution have failed; amid the noise of blustering winds
and falling leaves he thought he heard a cry of distress, and, at last
becoming uneasy, determined to visit his dulcinea’s window, and ask her
how she did. Tying his horses, he crept quietly along the shady side of
the hedge, which was that on the opposite side to her room, as he did
not wish to be seen. As soon as he reached the piazza, he followed along
under the edge of it till he came to the steps, where he waited for a
friendly cloud to conceal his movements, when he was compelled to pass
outside of them.
The opportunity soon offered, he slipped by, and the cloud cleared away
just after he had stumbled on a bundle of clothes, as he supposed,
beyond the steps; he turned to look; and there, lying upon her back,
staring up to heaven with lack-lustre, wide-open eyes, the crimson
stains upon her white forehead telling her fate, stiff, and stark, and
cold, lay all that he held dearest in this world. Her lips would never
again whisper words of love; her heart had ceased to feel that passion
which had proved her destruction. The lover’s cries aroused the house,
and brought out the trembling mother to behold her daughter still
undisturbed, with the horror of sudden and cruel death upon her
unmitigated. And amid the shrieks of the parent and the lamentations of
the servants, the maddened lover, who had been attacked with a frenzy
that never left him, heaped reproaches, and retaliated with curses on
her whose curses seemed in his insanity to have caused this terrible
calamity.
Of the parties to this tragedy there were none living in three months;
they were buried in adjoining graves, at the request of the mother, who
had it done apparently as an atonement. This palliation did not seem to
answer, however, for on the seventh of every month, at the hour of
eleven, a ghostly figure slips out of the front door, whether it is
locked or not, and with a scream falls from the piazza; a male figure
suddenly appears rent with agony at its side, and then another female
wringing her hands in despair, while the male gesticulates fiercely at
her. Such is this veritable history as I have it from the oldest
inhabitant, and it is no wonder that people do not like living in a
house with such associates.
I do not often use our horse; I am not fond of driving, and have a vivid
recollection of the early accidents with horse-flesh heretofore
mentioned; but when it became necessary to buy a pig, my judgment was
indispensable, and I was compelled to drive to the place of his
residence--which was the haunted house. I did not know that it was
haunted, and, being well aware of the decorum that requires the master
of the establishment to “tool” his coachman, no matter how much more
competent the latter may be, I took the reins, and dashed in grand style
along the entrance to the door. Leaving the coachman at the animal’s
head, I walked to the pig-pen, which was in the rear of the house, and
there was soon engrossed in admiring the beautiful little creature that
I have already described. Many minutes were devoted to the contemplation
of his innumerable fine points, and I was only aroused by the noise of a
struggle, shouts for help, and a clatter of hoofs. Instantly running
toward the front, I arrived just in time to see the heels of Dandy
Jim--for such was the animal’s name--disappearing round the corner, and
to help my groom, who was lying on his back in the road, upon his feet.
It seemed that the horse had stood perfectly quiet for several minutes,
then became uneasy, began to tremble, and turn his head with a wild look
over his shoulder. In spite of the efforts of the coachman, who was a
powerful fellow, and had been severely bruised in the struggle, he
reared and plunged violently, and finally, breaking away, dashed round
the circle, out at the entrance, and away up the road. The man firmly
believed that Dandy had seen the ghost, which was now mentioned for the
first time, although my views inclined to accept the occurrence as an
outcropping of the original sin of the horse family.
The pursuit of a runaway horse is a melancholy operation--his speed is
so much greater than his pursuer’s; his means of flight so much better
than the latter’s opportunities for stopping him; he has four feet to
set against two, and knows so well how to use them; he has such
unpleasant soundness of wind and limb, and such a raging devil inside of
him, while the satisfaction of recovering ruined _débris_ is so slight,
and the mode of punishment so vague. I followed along as best I might,
picking up a cushion here, a blanket there, the whip in one place, and
the seat in another, inquiring of every one that I met whether they had
seen a horse, and being invariably answered “that they guessed they
had.” It is enough to say that, after smashing every thing to pieces,
tearing the body of the wagon from the wheels, tossing out what was
movable, and ruining his harness, Dandy Jim became satisfied, and
allowed a rustic to catch him.
Here was a pretty family horse--afraid of a ghost when all respectable
families teach their children that there are no such things as ghosts;
running away under supernatural, and without even the excuse of mortal,
terror. I felt like shooting or selling--probably the latter, on
economical principles--Dandy Jim, but eventually concluded to repair,
or, more properly, remake the wagon. I could only have sold out at a
great loss--and I so rarely rode behind him.
Dandy had several peculiarities of temper besides his fear of ghosts. He
did not like steam-engines--if he had known how many people they kill,
he would have been entirely justifiable; so one day, when I was crossing
the track after having been to make a visit to a friend--for no one
visits on foot in the country--Dandy Jim saw the engine approaching.
That was sufficient; he immediately rose on his hind legs and pawed the
air. This might possibly have contented him, but the leather straps,
which were not intended to stand such a strain, gave way, and the wagon
came upon his heels. What then happened I do not precisely know; he
seemed to fly; occasionally he would appear to rise above the trees,
and then to descend into the bowels of the earth; he leaped from side
to side of the road with an ease and rapidity that would have shamed a
well-practiced kangaroo; the wagon bounded after him like the tail to a
boy’s kite when the latter gets pitching about with the violence of the
wind, while his heels played like flashes of lightning far over my head.
Fortunately, a countryman ran to my assistance and held back the wagon,
while another caught the horse by the head. I rewarded those men
liberally. Now a family horse should not kick, nor plunge, nor rear.
Another of his peculiarities was a dislike to standing. He did not mind
standing in the stable in the least, but when he was harnessed he
expected to keep moving. I hardly drove him sufficiently to learn his
eccentricities of temper, and on one occasion laid down the reins for a
moment. He immediately started, and the reins slipped over the
dash-board out of reach. Reader, have you ever experienced the feeling
of being run away with--I mean, female reader--by a horse? If not, do
not aspire to it. It is not pleasant. The motion is rapid, and perhaps
exhilarating, but it is not smooth, and the mode of stopping is
uncertain. There is little to do, and probably much to suffer, with a
possibility of ceasing to be. Dandy, instead of being a family horse,
ought to have been a race-horse; his speed was wonderful, though I
forgot to time it. I held by the dash-board, and shouted “ho!” at the
top of my voice. Evidently his knowledge of English was imperfect; he
mistook “ho” for “go,” and the more I shouted the faster he went.
[Illustration]
Where we went, or how we went, I never knew. When I came to my ordinary
senses, and escaped from what seemed to me like a blazing comet on a
“bust,” I found myself on the top of a pile of soft dirt--that species
of filth that the farmers obtain in the city, and put on their lands to
make vegetables grow. Although it smelled strong, and my clothes were
seriously damaged, my body proved, on careful examination, to be unhurt,
and my mental nature only badly scared. I concluded to sell that family
horse. My prejudices and impressions were in this instance, as in all
others, borne out by the result. I determined to wait, before I drove
again, till I could drive my own private steam-engine, for, with good
management, I believe steam-engines run smoother than horses.
It is hardly necessary to mention other peculiarities, such as an insane
desire to eat me up whenever I passed near his head, in entire disregard
of the fact that Nature had not made him carnivorous, and an equally
intense wish to kick me with his heels whenever I passed by his flanks.
These idiosyncracies prevented my visiting the stable frequently, while
our out-door acquaintance he had made short, and not sweet. Fortunately,
he was lame most of the time, and when he was not lame he wanted
shoeing, so that the family were not able to risk their lives
unreasonably often.
All this while the pig had been quietly feeding and growing; in fact, a
pig is a very different sort of animal. A pig never runs away and
smashes wagons;
[Illustration]
a pig never kicks people, nor dashes out their brains, nor drags them by
stirrups, nor does other such disagreeable things, but is gentle and
sweet tempered; he is all good. A boar’s head was the famous dish of
antiquity; his hams, and shoulders, and sides enable nations to carry on
war, ships to go to sea, and commerce to exist; his bristles help us to
keep our heads and clothes clean; his skin bestrides his competitor--and
then, upon the classic rule of a part standing for the whole, he is in
his right place; his petitoes are the delight of connoisseurs; his
entrails are converted into delicious sausages; and who has not read the
apotheosis of roast pig? Of a horse, the hide and bones perhaps are
useful, but the worthless carcass is only fit for carrion; dangerous in
life, while in death his boiling bones breed a pestilence.
Which, then, is the nobler animal?
NOTE.--My horse has just run away again, and I must go and collect
the wagon.
[Illustration]