Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/147

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THE SWINEHERDS.
141

I could see it very well; the wall was storm, the door whirlwind! Such a thing as that is worth all the trouble; it gives a man something to talk about. What do you come to know, you who lie idling in the sunshine, in the great floating pig-sty?”

And all the time the old man was talking, he kept rubbing the bacon-fat into his new shirt.

“Go with me to the Danube,” returned the youth; “there you will see a dance of pigs, all so fat, till they are ready to burst. They do not like to go into the vessel; we drive them with sticks; they push one against another; set themselves across; stretch themselves out on the earth, run hither and thither, however fat and heavy they may be. That is a dance! You would shake your sides with laughing! What a squealing there is! All the musicians in Hungary could not make such a squealing as that out of all their bagpipes, let them blow as hard as they would! How beautifully bright you have made your shirt look; you can’t improve it. Go with me—now do—to the Danube! I’ll give you something