Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims.  We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom.  The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young, pigs.  It looks like refining a violet.  Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice.  It might impart a gusto—­

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, “Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?” I forget the decision.

His sauce should be considered.  Decidedly, a few bread crums, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage.  But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe.  Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are—­but consider, he is a weakling—­a flower.

A BACHELOR’S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am.

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their wives ever made any great impression upon me, or had much tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more substantial considerations.  What oftenest offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different description;—­it is that they are too loving.

Not too loving neither:  that does not explain my meaning.  Besides, why should that offend me?  The very act of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other’s society, implies that they prefer one another to all the world.

But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not the object of this preference.  Now there are some things which give no offence, while implied or taken for granted merely; but expressed, there is much offence in them.  If a man were to accost