come
beaks. I was reminded of certain wild, low-bred pigs which I had seen
splitting the hazel-brush of the West, the kind that Bill Nye once
pictured as outrunning the fast mail. I said I feared our kitchen
by-product was not rich enough for Hans and Gretel. Possibly that was
true. Still, it would, have been better than nothing, which it appeared
was chiefly what those poor porkers had been living on.

Lazarus's love had waned and died. On chilly, stormy evenings it had
been easier to fling the contents of his pail and pan out back of the
wood-house than to carry them several times farther to the pen, while
the supplementary "shorts" had been shortened unduly for Hans and
Gretel. The physical evidence was all against Lazarus--the fascinations
of the big open fire had won him; he had been untrue to the pigs. When
he appeared, they charged him in chorus with his perfidy, and he could
frame no adequate reply. Westbury came, and I persuaded him to take them
at a reduction, and threw in Uncle Joe's pork and ham barrels. I said we
wanted Hans and Gretel to have a good home--that we had not been worthy
of them.

They found it at Westbury's. There they were in a sort of heaven. When I
saw them at the end of another two weeks they were again
unrecognizable--they were once more pigs.

We parted, with Lazarus about the same time. Our regime was not suited
to his needs. It was a pity. With his gifts, the right people might have
modeled him into a politician, or something, but we couldn't. We had
neither the equipment nor the time. Nor, according to agreement, could
we administer that discipline which, from our old-fashioned point of
view, he sometimes seemed to require. We could only "send back to de
home." Perhaps to-day he is "somewhere in France," making a good
soldier. I hope so.

IV

_Westbury had advised against wheat_

But if our venture in pig culture had not been an entire success, our
agriculture gave better promise. Our rye and grass seed had come up
abundantly, and by November the fields, viewed from a little distance,
were a mass of vivid green. There is something approaching a thrill in
seeing the seed of your own sowing actually break ground and spring up
and wax strong with promise. You seem somehow to have had a hand in the
ancient miracle of life.

Our rye had such a sturdy look that I said it was pretty sure to turn
out something fancy in the way of grain, and that we could probably sell
it as "seed"