HOW TO MANAGE A HOG.

Otago Witness, Issue 1442, 12 July 1879, Page 24

HOW TO MANAGE A HOG.

At midnight the summers came. Matia Ann thrust her elbows cloverly between two of my ribs, and whispered in ghostly accents, " Joshua, there is a hog in tho garden." I have lived with Maria locg eneugh to know that she expects me to citch her ideis instantly, and although she had said nothing about it, I knew she anticipated that I would rise in my might and go for that hog. I accordingly rose in'my nnehr, and begau groping around for my pantaloons. I felt that without them I could not appear to that advantage that would command the respect of tho hog. I had no idea we possessed so much wearing apparel until I begun to inventory it in the dark, while lor king for my pantaloons. I got hold of articles of edging, and articles with flounces and with embroidery and with strings, while Maria kept whispering through the gloom, "That hog will eat up all the potatoes before ycu get down stairs. You are fearfully slow." 1 got half way down, when it suddenly occurred to me that the hng. was not in our garden, for the very good icason that we had no garden for the hog to get into ; still, we had a cistern, and the hog might get into that. It would be just like a hog. This thought so startled me that I seemed pretty well tangled up in the garment I had adopted. Maria Ann, who always proves equal to any ernergeDcy, soothed mo a good deal by coming to the top of the stairs, and calling me "idiot," and other pet title 3 she is in the way of applyiog in moments of tenderness. I got out of tbe front door as Boon as possible, and the hog, which was looking at the house from the front yard, apparently with a view of routing it, stood appalled. I did not wonder at thu. In my haste in dressing I inadvertently put on Maria Ann's poV naise, and it Btands to reason that a man arrayed in a white night-shirt and a blue polonaise, ruehitig ' from the frontdoor of a house at the solemn hour of midnight, must present an appalling spectacle to any hog. After recovering frcm jais monetary astonishment, the hog 4 tor«k three more kinks in his tail and scooted three times around the yard. The front gate was wide open, but he never thought of going through that. He seemed to be looking for a good place to jump over the fence. I tangled myself up in the polonaise again and took a flying leap into the yard, landing on my left eye-brow. The hog ran around the house three times more in the opposite direction with four kinks in his tail. I am blow to wrath, but I am afraid I was beginning to get mad, and when I went around behind the hcu-e and got a hatchet, I am' obliged to confesa that it was with a firm purpose to kill that hog or die trying to. 1 I don't think the hog had noticed the woodBhed until I went there for tho hatchet, but when I returned to the front yard he immediately retired to the woodshed, and then I knew I had him cornered.

Maria had by this time recovered her pre'aenco of mind, snd had got her head oub of a front window upstaiis, ard was yelling " Fire !" with all her might, and in & wsy calculated to ba of inestimable service to me. All I needed to spur me oa to glory waß «oiue one to yell "Fire!" I entered the woodBhed cautiously, and found tho hog completely at my mercy, unlets he made a hole through the kitchen, and escaped that way. He did not do that.' On the contrary, he rushed right at me I stepped back rather hastily, nob because he s^artd me aDy, but to prevent him from tearing my polonaise. lam always careful to ketp hog* off my polonaise, co far at possible. There was a wash-tub full of suds behind me, and as I stepped back out of the way of the hog, in a fit of absentmindednesa, I sat down in the tub. It may seem curious, but my recollection now is that the tub fitted me a good deal more snugly than the polonaise had, and yet I had never tried the tub on before in all my born days. The only way out of the tub was to tip it over and float out on the suds, and that I at once did.

Maria, still true to me in my" affliction, opened the kitchen door, and with her face full of wifely anxiety, and surrounded by a night-cip frill, and her month wide open, she really looked like a saint at something, but she was remarking "Murder" at the time, and her voice so startled the ho# that ho ran over me beforj I could get out of the suda. How he mar aged to step on me thirty-two time 3in runriog over me once, is a mystary both to Maria Ann and rny3elf ; bat Le did, for we cOuntsd the spots his hoofs made.

After running over me, he walked out the font gire as solemnly' as though he were on his way to church, and it ia my sober belief that he C3me into the yard on purpose to run over me, and for nothing else. Maria Arm declares she won't wear that polonaise any nrrre, and I am tolerably sure I thall not ; not if I know ifc. — Scill water (Minn.) Lumberman.