The Scolliver Pig.
One of Thomas Jefferson's maxims is as follows:
“When angry, count ten before you speak; if very
angry, count a hundred.” I once knew a man to
square his conduct by this rule, with a most gratifying
result. Jacob Scolliver, a man prone to bad
temper, one day started across the fields to visit his
father, whom he generously permitted to till a
small corner of the old homestead. He found the old
gentleman behind the barn, bending over a barrel
that was canted over at an angle of seventy degrees,
and from which issued a cloud of steam. Scolliver
père was evidently scalding one end of a dead pig
—an operation essential to the loosening of the
hair, that the corpse may be plucked and shaven.
“Good morning, father,” said Mr. Scolliver, approaching,
and displaying a long, cheerful smile.
“Got a nice roaster there?” The elder gentleman's
head turned slowly and steadily, as upon a swivel, until
his eyes pointed backward; then he drew his arms
out of the barrel, and finally, revolving his body till
it matched his head, he deliberately mounted upon
the supporting block and sat down upon the sharp
edge of the barrel in the hot steam. Then he replied,
“Good mornin', Jacob. Fine mornin'.”
“A little warm in spots, I should imagine,” returned
the son. “Do you find that a comfortable
seat?” “Why—yes—it's good enough for an old
man,” he answered, in a slightly husky voice, and
with an uneasy gesture of the legs; “don't make much
difference in this life where we set, if we're good—
does it? This world ain't heaven, anyhow, I s'spose.”
“There I do not entirely agree with you,”
rejoined the young man, composing his body
upon a stump for a philosophical argument. “I
don't neither,” added the old one, absently, screwing
about on the edge of the barrel and constructing
a painful grimace. There was no argument,
but a silence instead. Suddenly the aged party
sprang off that barrel with exceeding great haste,
as of one who has made up his mind to do a thing
and is impatient of delay. The seat of his trousers
was steaming grandly, the barrel upset, and there
was a great wash of hot water, leaving a deposit of
spotted pig. In life that pig had belonged to Mr.
Scolliver the younger! Mr. Scolliver the younger
was angry, but remembering Jefferson's maxim, he
rattled off the number ten, finishing up with “You
— thief!” Then perceiving himself
very angry,
he began all over again and ran up to one hundred,
as a monkey scampers up a ladder. As the last
syllable shot from his lips he planted a dreadful
blow between the old man's eyes, with a shriek that
sounded like—“You son of a sea-cook!”
Mr. Scolliver the elder went down like a stricken
beef, and his son often afterward explained that if he
had not counted a hundred, and so given himself
time to get thoroughly mad, he did not believe he
could ever have licked the old man.
