 | The fiend's delight |  |
Pork on the Hoof.
The motto aut Cœsar aut nullus is principally
nonsense, we take it. If one may not be a man,
one may, in most cases, be a hog with equal satisfaction
to his mind and heart.
There is Thompson Washington Smith, for example
(his name is not Thompson, nor Washington,
nor yet Smith; we call him so to conceal his real
name, which is perhaps Smythe). Now Thompson,
there is reason to believe, tried earnestly for some
years to be a man. Alas! he began while he was a
boy, and got exhausted before he arrived at maturity.
He could make no further effort, and manhood is
not acquired without a mighty struggle, nor mantained
without untiring industry. So having
fatigued himself before reaching the starting-point,
Thompson Washington did not re-enter the race
for manhood, but contented his simple soul with
achieving a modest swinehood. He became a hog
of considerable talent and promise.
Let it not be supposed that Thompson has anything
who encrusts his hide with clay, and inhumes his
muzzle in garbage. Far from it; he is a cleanly—
almost a godly—hog, preternaturally fair of exterior,
and eke fastidious of appetite. He is glossy of coat,
stainless of shirt, immaculate of trousers. He is
shiny of beaver and refulgent of boot. With all,
a Hog. Watch him ten minutes under any circumstances
and his face shall seem to lengthen
and sharpen away, split at the point, and develop
an unmistakeable snout. A ridge of bristles will
struggle for sunlight under the gloss of his coat.
This is your imagination, and that is about as far
as it will take you. So long as Thompson Washington,
actual, maintains a vertical attitude,
Thompson Washington, unreal, will not assume an
horizontal one. Your fancy cannot “go the whole
hog.”
It only remains to state explicitly to whom we
are alluding. Well, there is a stye in the soul
of every one of us, in which abides a porker more
or less objectionable. We don't all let him range
at large, like Smith, but he will occasionally exalt
his visage above the rails of even the most cleverly
constructed pen. The best of us are they who
spend most time repressing the beast by rapping
him upon the nose.
| The fiend's delight | |