binding shoes to buy bread.  But what i want to tell you is three days after you left on the Two Marys, Sheriff Warner come with a rit, and carried away the three pigs, and Warner has bin donnin me life out for that old store bill, and Draner says he wont wait another day for the rent, and Aldrich says you owe him ten dollars borrowed money, which you had better pay afore you make so much noise in New York.  But what i want to tell you is, that i lent what little money you left to Captain Ben Larnard, who says he can’t pay it back right away, but will when his wife gits home, though Captain Spelt’s wife says she’s run off with another man.  And there’s that trifle due when you went away to Jefferson Bigelow the butcher, he keeps a lookin in and giving me the startles, and saying how Squire Benson lives at the corner.  Now as you love your poor wife and children come home, and let politiks alone, and provide for your children like a good christian and an honest man, which I have heard it said a politishon cant be.  And this is the prayer of your true and affeckshonite wife Polly Potter.”

“A bombshell from my wife Polly, sure enough!” ejaculated the general; “but she is a sensible woman, and with learning would have made her mark in the world.  A man must not look back though, but renew his demonstrations against misfortune, and then if he succeed let him thank his energy.  And yet it is true, as my wife Polly says, my politics have brought me in but little meat, and my children have often times gone scantily clad, whereas they might have had plenty if I’d stuck to the bench.  However, a point approached, is a point gained, and now that my hand is almost upon a mission, which will repay for all my disappointments, it will not do to walk back into the house and shut the door.”

Thus the hero reasoned within himself.  It was true, old Battle was eating his head off.  But the pig had made a wonderful sensation, and so crowded the house every night as to demonstrate the fact that first rate talent of every kind was highly appreciated in New York.  The critics, with scarcely a dissenting voice, had declared the pig a marvel, a profound embodiment of talent, one of the wonders of the age; an animal possessed of such rare gifts that no lover of the curious in natural history should lose the opportunity of witnessing his performances.  And in order to diversify these distinguished and very popular entertainments, the clever showman had introduced a piece called “Evenings with the Critics,” in one scene of which was presented a litter of nine precocious pigs, habited in bright, colored mantles, and seated on seats forming a semicircle, with Duncan in ducal robes seated on a throne, and presiding with the gravest demeanor.  The nine small pigs were supposed to represent various members of the critic tribe, while Duncan, who was in spectacles, personated Doctor Easley.  And so cleverly did the showman understand the instincts of critics, as well as the