206 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



the animating excitement of an empty stomach, the southern hog traverses the 

 fields, and woods, and meadows, and mountains, from the rising of the sun to the 

 going down thereof, in search of "creature comforts," as persiraons, and acorns?, 

 and nuts, in company with his rivals, brothers and sisters, and cousins, with all of 

 whom he sleeps o' nights without sense or deed of sin or shame. Sometimes 

 you will see them all waiting under a stray peach or apple tree in an old field, 

 watching and scrambling for the fruit by its sound as it falls, like boys round a 

 bandy-ball. Kept thus constantly on the trot, working hardly, though it may be 

 sometimes roguishly, for their living, the southern pig has time to groiv and ac- 

 quire the name of hog before he dies, weighing not more, if it can be helped, 

 than 160 at eighteen months. Thus his flesh acquires a proper texture and con- 

 sistency, or "hardness," as it is termed, which, if cured by a good, thrifty, man- 

 aging, and well bred and brought up housewife, comes out of the smoke-house 

 worth, as bacon, its weight in gold — red and juicy, and savory, and tender, and 

 yet firm ; neither too salt nor too fresh, too hard nor too soft ; with, in short, a 

 je ne sais quoi to be found in the bacon of no other part of the worl^, except 

 Westphalia, outside the five corn-growing States, Maryland, Virginia, North Car- 

 olina, Kentucky and Tennessee. We should not be afraid to bet any wager that 

 for pork — " pickled pork " — all England — Old England — could not beat the hogs 

 that were exhibited at Worcester. 



"Very much beyond our design or expectation as we have drawn out this de- 

 sultory notice, we cannot draw it to a close without repeating with admiration, 

 that throughout the vast fields and houses of exhibition thronged with such an 

 unparalleled concourse of people, we saw not a sign of intoxication, nor of any- 

 thing, anywhere, to produce it. And now we must steal a brief space to express 

 our humble approval of the good taste which winds up these festivals for the 

 men with a ball for the amusement of the ladies. Honored with an invitation to 

 the one which made the finale to the gala-day at Worcester, and accompanied 

 by one of refined taste, whose observation is more exact than ours, we must de- 

 clare that we never saw an assembly, except some at Charleston last winter, 

 where the young ladies were as uniformly handsome, and dressed in such per- 

 fect style of chaste if not rather severe simplicity and true elegance, marking the 

 happy medium between carelessness on the one side and ostentatious gaudincss 

 on the other. Regarding it in the light of an agricultural ball, incidental to a 

 great display of agricultural industry, we are not traveling beyond the line of the 

 occasion to add,^and even if we were we would not deny ourselves the personal 

 satisfaction we have in adding, as to the young gentlemen in attendance on the 

 ball, that we never witnessed a higher measure of good breeding and beautiful 

 propriety than was displayed on their part throughout. No wall-flowers were 

 made of young ladies who happened not to be wealthy or popular : all were in- 

 vited to dance, while the elder ladies were treated with respectful attention and 

 seasonably served with refreshments in genteel abundance without vulgar su- 

 perfluity. There was no skulking or shirking away of the young men from the 

 ladies, into withdrawing rooms and card rooms, for the sake of drinking and gam- 

 bling. Oh ! how differently have we seen these things managed in other times 

 and places, as who has not ? But, thank God ! the world is waking up to the 

 love of knowledge, and knowledge is everywhere the sure precursor of reform 

 and the best parent of virtue. 



(446) 



