"

"I don't see how I could if there are n't any to dig."

"But won't you go look--dig up a few hills--you can't tell until you
look. You said you did n't leave the key outside in the door yesterday
when we went to town, but you did. And as for a lot of pigs--"

"I don't want a lot of pigs," I protested.

"But you do, though. You want a lot of everything. Here you 've
planted five hundred cabbages for winter just as if we were a
sauerkraut factory--and the probabilities are we shall go to town this
winter--"

"Go where!" I cried.

"And as for pigs, your head is as full of pigs as Deerfoot Farm or the
Chicago stockyards--

_Mullein Hill Sausages
Made of Little Pigs_

that's really your dream"--spelling out the advertisement with pea-pods
on the porch floor.

"Now, don't you think it best to save some things for your
children,--this sausage business, say,--and you go on with your humble
themes and books?"

She looked up at me patiently, sweetly inscrutable as she added:--

"You need a pig, Dallas, one pig, I am quite sure; but two pigs are
nothing short of the pig business, and that is not what we are living
here on Mullein Hill for."

She went in with her peas and left me with my pigs--or perhaps they
were her thoughts; leaving thoughts around being a habit of hers.

What did she mean by my needing a pig? She was quite sure I needed
_one_ pig. Is it my own peculiar, personal need? That can hardly be,
for I am not different from other men. There may be in all men, deep
down and unperceived, except by their wives, perhaps, traits and
tendencies that call for the keeping of a pig. I think this must be
so, for while she has always said we need the cow or the chickens or
the parsley, she has never spoken so of the pig, it being referred to
invariably as mine, until put into the cellar in a barrel.

The pig as my property, or rather as my peculiar privilege, is utterly
unrelated in her mind to _salt_ pork. And she is right about that. No
man needs a pig to put in a barrel. Everybody knows that it costs less
to buy your pig in the barrel. And there is little that is edifying
about a barrel of salt pork. I always try to fill my mind with
cheerful thoughts before descending into the dark of the cellar to fish
a cold, white lump of the late pig out of the pickle.

Not in the uncertain hope of his becoming pork, but for the certain
present joy of his _being_ pork, does a man need a pig. In all