small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, whose carcass garnishes a butcher's door-post, but he grunts out "Such is life; all flesh is pork!" buries his nose in the mire again, and waddles down the gutter, comforting himself with the reflection that there is one snout the less to anticipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any rate.
"They are the city scavengers, these pigs, ugly brutes they are; having for the most part scanty brown backs, like the lids of old horse-hair trunks, spotted with unwholesome black blotches; they have long, gaunt legs too, and such peaked snouts that if one of them could be persuaded, to sit for his profile, nobody would recognize it for a pig's likeness; they are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are thrown upon their own resources in early life, and become preternaturally knowing in consequence; every pig knows where he lives much better than any body could tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing in, you will see them roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. Occasionally some youth among them who has overeaten himself, or has been worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal son; but this is a rare case; perfect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure, being their foremost attributes. (Dickens' American Notes.)
And Mrs. Trollope piteously exclaims "I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs! The immense quantity of business done in this line would hardly be believed by those who had not witnessed it. I never saw a newspaper without remarking such advertisements as the following: "Wanted immediately, 4000 fat hogs;" "For sale, 2000 barrels of prime pork." But the annoyance came nearer than this. If I determined upon a walk up Main Street, the chances were five hundred to one against my reaching the shady side without brushing by a snout or two, fresh dripping from the kennel. When we had screwed up our courage to the enterprise of mounting a certain noble-looking sugar-loaf hill, that promised pure air and a fine view, we found the brook we had to cross at its foot, red with the blood from a pig slaughter-house; while our noses, instead of meeting "the thyme that loves the green hill's breast," were greeted by odors that I will not describe, and which I heartily hope my readers cannot imagine; our feet, that on leaving the city had expected to press the flowery sod, literally got entangled in pigs' tails and jaw-bones; and thus the prettiest walk in the neighborhood was interdicted for ever."
The common breed may for the most part be described as large, rough, long-nosed, big-boned, thin-backed, slab-sided, long-legged, ravenous, ugly animals. But latterly great improvements have been made in it by judicious crossing with the Chinese and Berkshire pigs, by crossing these two breeds with each other, and by careful breeding from these two stocks without intermixture.
