THE LOVE-CHILD. 659 



Monday and Saturday during the other five he fed in perfect free- 

 dom on the common. Once upon a time., Squire Patch's people had 

 caught and put him in harness, by way of a lark ; but his emanci- 

 pation was speedily achieved by a trifling exertion of his prodigious 

 powers the coachman said " that he could kick a town down." 



This capital creature was a very useful piece of property : but 

 touching my grandmother's other animal nothing laudatory can be 

 said. Nobody could recollect where she had picked him up. The 

 bacon was all bought there had not been a porker in the parish 

 within the memory of man. Sir Simon had neither cotemporaries, 

 progeny, or subjects he was himself alone the PIG. 



There were plenty of cocks and hens cows, bulls, bullocks, rams, 

 ewes, lambs, and chilver hogs but no pig barring Sir Simon. The 

 Ned had not a name the pig had. Every body knew him as Sir 

 Simon. He was the kindest, the most patient animal in the world. 

 If the boys had nothing better to do, they sought him out, on 

 the common, and three or four of them at once bestrode him. When 

 fairly mounted he would ejaculate a note or two, expressive of mock- 

 heroic indignation, raise his head, cock his tail, and set off at full 

 speed. In a few moments his riders were invariably thrown. Buckle 

 himself could not sit a pig at full speed. The scapular and caudal 

 vertebrae are so much lower than the lumbar at least they were in 

 Sir Simon, the only pig I ever rode that with the animal's violent 

 action the rider is inevitably shuffled over his head, or shelved over 

 his tail, unless he can take and maintain hold of the latter organ and 

 one of the ears. But this Sir Simon would on no account permit. 

 He was good-humoured to a fault ; he would dig on the common for 

 the roots he loved with a squib tied to his tail, but the moment you 

 touched his ears you put him in a passion he debased you to the 

 level of a dog, and knocked you ten feet off, topsy turvy, without 

 the least remorse. His tusks were like the canine teeth of a tiger, 

 but he never used them, even when irritated, except against dogs. 

 He would lift a boy by an upward action of his snout over a fern 

 bush, and leave him unhurt upon the sward beyond ; but if a strange 

 dog tackled him, it was his sublime pleasure to adopt a demi-lateral, 

 demi-perpendicular action of the head, by which his assailant was 

 mortally ripped, and tossed, sprawling in the agonies of death, over 

 the swine's head. To the boys Sir Simon was a rough, good- 

 humoured playmate on an emergency ; to a dog he was dire. 



The pig had but one predilection : he never testified the least par- 

 ticle of love towards me, my grandmother, or any other human being ; 

 but for the Ned he entertained a decided partiality. He was always 

 with him, except when once now and then he would stroll into Cuckold's 

 Harem wood for a feast of beech-mast and acorns. Where the Ned 

 was grazing, there the pig was ploughing. He trotted by the side 

 of his long-eared friend, when their mutual mistress took home her 

 clean linen ; he couched on the common, at his back. He recognized 

 nothing but the Ned ; but the Ned never seemed to take the least 

 notice of him. 



The realities that mingled with my dream were my grandmother's 

 sscreams, the howls of Sin, Squire Patch's shouts, and Sir Simon's 

 deep guttural triumphant grunt. I awoke in a violent fright, and as 



