OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



A PIG AND A COW 



I PROPOSE an odd horticultural subject ; but the 

 man who plants a garden, and builds a cottage, 

 and carries in his thought the hope of shaking 

 off the dust of the city under green trees upon 

 his own sward-land, where some— nameless 

 party — in white lawn, with blue ribbon of a 

 sash (as in Mr. Irving's pretty picture of a 

 wife), stands ready to greet him, after an hour 

 of torture at the hands of our humane railroad 

 directors— the man, I say, who looks forward 

 to all this, and enters upon the experience, 

 thinks, sooner or later, of a cow and a pig — 

 the pig to consume the waste growth of his 

 garden, and the cow to supply such tender 

 food for his growing ones as they most need. 

 The pig can hardly be regarded as a classic 

 animal; Virgil, indeed, introduces him as 

 crunching acorns under elm-trees— which ac- 

 count I cannot help reckoning as apocryphal. 

 But he is a very jolly and frisky little animal 

 in his young days, not without a good deal of 

 clumsy grace in his movements, and showing 

 a most human zeal for the full end of the 

 trough. 



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