here the different trades and industries were represented
in the wagons. There were coopers, hatters, shoemakers, blacksmiths,
bakers, tinners, and others, all hard at work; and from time to time
they threw out to the crowd something they had made. My boy caught a tin
cup, and if it had been of solid silver he could not have felt it a
greater prize. He ran home to show it and leave it in safe-keeping, and
then hurried back, so as to walk with the other boys abreast of a great
platform on wheels, where an old woman sat spinning inside of a
log-cabin, and a pioneer in a hunting-shirt stood at the door, with his
long rifle in his hand. In the window sat a raccoon, which was the Whig
emblem, and which, on all their banners, was painted with the legend,
"That same old Coon!" to show that they had not changed at all since the
great days when they elected the pioneer, General Harrison, president of
the United States. Another proof of the fact was the barrel of
hard-cider which lay under the cabin window.

XII.

PETS.

AS there are no longer any Whig boys in the world, the coon can no
longer be kept anywhere as a political emblem, I dare say. Even in my
boy's time the boys kept coons just for the pleasure of it, and without
meaning to elect Whig governors and presidents with them. I do not know
how they got them--they traded for them, perhaps, with fellows in the
country that had caught them, or perhaps their fathers bought them in
market; some people thought they were very good to eat, and, like
poultry and other things for the table, they may have been brought alive
to market. But, anyhow, when a boy had a coon, he had to have a
store-box turned open side down to keep it in, behind the house; and he
had to have a little door in the box to pull the coon out through when
he wanted to show it to other boys, or to look at it himself, which he
did forty or fifty times a day, when he first got it. He had to have a
small collar for the coon, and a little chain, because the coon would
gnaw through a string in a minute. The coon himself never seemed to take
much interest in keeping a coon, or to see much fun or sense in it. He
liked to stay inside his box, where he had a bed of hay, and whenever
the boy pulled him out, he did his best to bite the boy. He had no
tricks; his temper was bad; and there was nothing about him except the
rings round his tail and his political principles that anybody could
care for. He never did an