to go at liberty through pasture fields, commons, and along roadsides, where they make up as well as they can for the scanty pittance allowed them at home during meal-times.  We do not, however, impeach Phil’s honesty; but simply content ourselves with saying, that when his journey was accomplished, he mostly found the original number with which he had set out increased by three or four, and sometimes by half a dozen.  Pigs in general resemble each other, and it surely was not Phil’s fault if a stray one, feeding on the roadside or common, thought proper to join his drove and see the world.  Phil’s object, we presume, was only to take care that his original number was not diminished, its increase being a matter in which he felt little concern.  He now determined to take a professional trip to England, and that this might be the more productive, he resolved to purchase a lot of the animals we have been describing.  No time was lost in this speculation.  The pigs were bought up as cheaply as possible, and Phil sat out, for the first time in his life, to try with what success he could measure his skill against that of a Yorkshireman.  On this occasion, he brought with him a pet, which he had with considerable pains trained up for purposes hereafter to be explained.

There was nothing remarkable in the passage, unless that every creature on board was sea-sick, except the pigs; even to them, however, the change was a disagreeable one; for to be pent up in the hold of a ship was a deprivation of liberty, which, fresh as they were from their native hills, they could not relish.  They felt, therefore, as patriots, a loss of freedom, but not a whit of appetite; for, in truth, of the latter no possible vicissitude short of death could deprive them.

Phil, however, with an assumed air of simplicity absolutely stupid, disposed of them to a Yorkshire dealer at about twice the value they would have brought in Ireland, though as pigs went in England it was low enough.  He declared that they had been fed on tip-top feeding:  which was literally true, as he afterwards admitted that the tops of nettles and potato stalks constituted the only nourishment they had got for three weeks before.

The Yorkshireman looked with great contempt upon what he considered a miserable essay to take him in.

“What a fule this Hirishmun mun bea;” said he, “to think to teake me in!  Had he said that them there Hirish swoine were badly feade, I’d ha’ thought it fairish enough on un; but to seay that they was oll weal feade on tip-top feeadin’!  Nea, nea!  I knaws weal enough that they was noat feade on nothin’ at oll, which meakes them loak so poorish!  Howsomever, I shall fatten them.  I’se warrant—­I’se warrant I shall!”

When driven home to sties somewhat more comfortable than the cabins of unfortunate Irishmen, they were well supplied with food which would have been very often considered a luxury by poor Paddy himself, much less by his pigs.