aid to descend the trunks of
trees during the winter, but with far different motives.

In this manner he cautiously retrograded downwards with a hardihood,
which set furze bushes, brooms, tongs, and all other available weapons
of the cabin at defiance. We are bound, however, to declare, that this
mode of entrance, which was only resorted to when every other failed,
was usually received by the cottager and his family with a degree of
mirth and good-humor that were not lost upon the sagacity of the pig.
In order to save him from being scorched, which he deserved for his
temerity, they usually received him in a creel, often in a quilt, and
sometimes in the tattered blanket, or large pot, out of which he looked
with a humorous conception of his own enterprise, that was highly
diverting. We must admit, however, that he was sometimes received with
the comforts of a hot poker, which Paddy pleasantly called, "givin' him
a warm welcome."

Another trait in the character of these animals, was the utter scorn
with which they treated all attempts to fatten them. In fact, the usual
consequences of good feeding were almost inverted in their case; and
although I might assert that they became leaner in proportion to what
they received, yet I must confine myself to truth, by stating
candidly that this was not the fact; that there was a certain state
of fleshlessness to which they arrived, but from which they neither
advanced nor receded by good feeding or bad. At this point, despite of
all human ingenuity, they remained stationary for life, received
the bounty afforded them with a greatness of appetite resembling
the fortitude of a brave man, which rises in energy according to the
magnitude of that which it has to encounter. The truth is, they were
scandalous hypocrites; for with the most prodigious capacity for food,
they were spare as philosophers, and fitted evidently more for the chase
than the sty; rather to run down a buck or a hare for the larder, than
to have a place in it themselves. If you starved them, they defied you
to diminish their flesh; and if you stuffed them like aldermen, they
took all they got, but disdained to carry a single ounce more than
if you gave them whey thickened with water. In short, they gloried in
maceration and liberty; were good Irish scholars, sometimes acquainted
with Latin; and their flesh, after the trouble of separating it from a
superfluity of tough skin, was excellent venison so far as it went.