if she were a lady," it
sounds like good sense.

Pigs are naturally so untidy about their persons, and have such shocking
table-manners that it seems difficult to treat a sow like a lady, but
that one in the pen yonder, with her litter of sucking pigs, seems
very interesting. Come, let's have a look. Aren't the little pigs dear
things? I'd like to climb in and take one of them up to pet it; do you
s'pose she'd mind it if I did? I can see decided improvement in the
modern hogs over old Mose Batcheller's. If you remember, his were what
were known as "razorbacks." They could go like the wind, and the fence
was not made that could stop them. If they couldn't root under it, they
could turn themselves sidewise and slide through between the rails.
It was told me that, failing all else, they could give their tails a
swing--you remember the big balls of mud they used to have on their
tails' ends--they could swing their tails after the manner of an athlete
throwing the hammer, and fly over the top of the tallest stake-and-rider
fence ever put up. I don't know whether this is the strict truth or not,
but it is what was told me as a little boy, and I don't think people
would wilfully deceive an innocent child.

The pigs nowaday aren't as smart as that, but they cut up better at
hog-killing time. They aren't quite so trim; indeed, they are nothing
but cylinders of meat, whittled to a point at the front end, and set on
four pegs, but as you lean on the top-rail of the pens out at the County
Fair and look down upon them, you can picture in your mind, without
much effort, ham, and sidemeat, and bacon, and spare-ribs, and smoked
shoulder, and head-cheese, and liver-wurst, and sausages, and glistening
white lard for crullers and pie-crust--Yes, I think pigs are right
interesting. I know they've got Scripture for it, the folks that think
it is wrong to eat pork, but somehow I feel sorry for them; they miss
such a lot, not only in the eating line, but other ways. They are always
being persecuted, and harassed, and picked at. Whereas the pork-fed man,
it seems to me, sort of hankers to be picked at. It gives him a good
chance to slap somebody slonchways. He feels better after he has seen
his persecutors go away with a cut lip, and fingering of their teeth to
see if they're all there.

You'll just have to take me gently but firmly by the sleeve and lead me
past the next exhibit, the noisy one, where there's so much cackling
and crowing.