130 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



was not sufficient "mast" [i. e. acorns and nuts] to fatten 

 them; and I was not so green as to undertake making 

 pork of them with corn, and they lived to multiply 

 another season. 



The next fall, mast was plenty, and "wood hogs" were 

 fat. I now had "from fifty to one hundred head," but 

 fat hogs in the woods will die; and when killing time 

 came, I could only lay violent hands on eighteen. Only 

 one-half of them were fit to be called pork. I still had 

 a large "claim" upon hogs in the woods; but last fall 

 I could only muster some ten or a dozen "fit to fatten;" 

 and these I let a neighbor, not so well experienced in 

 hogology as I was, have to "fat at the halves." By strong 

 exertions, he succeeded in making a pen stout enough to 

 keep them upon a continual trot around it, without find- 

 ing an outlet. Here, after eating and wasting in the mud 

 more than fifty bushels of corn apiece, he brought me my 

 half of "hog meat." Another neighbor being destitute, 

 and this looking to him "as though it might be eatable," 

 I told him to take it, and we would never quarrel about 

 the price or mode of payment ; and I bought my "pork" 

 for my own use. 



But this is not the end of my hog speculation. I still 

 had five shoats, and upon them I determined to try what 

 good keeping would do. Accordingly, I "caught them," 

 and put them in a good warm pen, composed of an eating 

 room, a sleeping room, and a retiring room. Nearly 

 every day have I furnished these (permit me to say, 

 devils) with good dry straw, and nearly every night have 

 they slept in a wet, filthy bed. The straw they have eat 

 and scattered through the pen, and all the filth that they 

 should have left in the outside room, they have deposited 

 in their beds. Whoever knows me, knows that no do- 

 mestic animal of mine, ever lacks food; and it has not 

 been spared upon these in the pen. Forgive me, but I 

 can't call them hogs. Ruta bagas, beets, potatoes, bran, 

 and house slops, including the milk of two cows, all win- 

 ter, have not been spared. 



