he is kind, for he knows that he is driving quicksilver. The
least undue coercion, the least sudden start, and they will be off like
spilled marbles, in eleven different directions. Sometimes occasion arises
for prompt action: when the poet of the family dreams he discerns the
promised land through the bottom of a gate, and is bent on squeezing his
way under, and the demoralisation of the whole eleven seems imminent.
Then, unconsciously applying the wisdom of Solomon, the driver deals a
smart flick to the old mother. Seeing her move on, and reflecting that she
carries all the provisions of the party, her children think better of
their romance, and gambol after her, taking a gamesome pull at her teats
from high spirits.

The man never seems to get angry with them. He is smiling gently to
himself all the time, as he softly and leisurely walks behind them.
Indeed, wherever this moving nursery of young life passes, it awakens
tenderness. The man who drove the gig so rapidly a little way off suddenly
slows down, and, with a sympathetic word, walks his horse gingerly by.
Every pedestrian stops and smiles, and on every face comes a transforming
tenderness, a touch of almost motherly sweetness. So dear is young life to
the eye and heart of man.

A few weeks hence these same pedestrians will pass these same pigs with
no emotion, beyond, possibly, that produced by the sweet savour of frying
ham. Their _naivete_, their charming baby quaintness, will have departed
for ever. Their features, as yet but roguishly indicated, will have become
set and hidebound; their soft little snouts will be ringed, and hard as a
fifth hoof; their dainty little ears--veritable silk purses--will have
grown long and bristly: in short, they will have lost that ineffable
tender bloom of young life which makes them quite a touching sight to-day.
Strange that loss of charm which comes with development in us all, pigs
included. A tendency to pigginess, as in these youngsters, a tendency to
manhood in the prattling and crowing babe, are both hailed as charming:
but the full-grown pig! the full-grown man! Alas! in each case the charm
seems to flee with the advent of bristles.

But let us return to the driver.

Under his arm he carries a basket, from which now and again proceed
suppressed squeaks and grunts. It is 'the rickling,' the weakling, of the
family. It will probably find an early death, and be embalmed in sage and
onions. The man has already had an