THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
left she stood at the bars, gazing after him until he 
was out of sight. 
It is from the economic standpoint that I like to 
approach this question. It does not pay to make 
anything unhappy; it pays to make everything 
about us as comfortable as possible. I have no 
liking for swine, yet in a small country homestead 
they can often be kept as profitably as hens. The 
object is to have some way of disposing of the house 
waste and garden surplus. Some of this can go to 
the cow, and often a horse likes nothing better than 
a pail of nicely prepared stuff from the kitchen. A 
laborer’s family, without a horse, will probably 
keep a pig—and wisely. As generally treated, 
these are vile companions, housed in filth. Allowed 
the run of the orchard, they are far from offen- 
sive, and are at the same time valuable in the way of 
destroying grubs in the soil and in wormy apples. 
Such pigs make healthy meat, while those bred in 
filth do not. Prof. Shaler, of Harvard University, 
says, “It is commonly supposed that our pigs are 
among the least intelligent of the creatures which 
man has turned to his use. This is due to the fact 
that the condition in which these animals are kept 
insures their degradation, by cutting them off from 
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