"Never in a Pork-haouse?"
"Never."
"Wall, yeou"ve hearn tell--of Ohio, I reckon?"
"Oh, yes! got a daughter living out there," was the answer.
"Yeou don"t say so?"
"I have, in Urbana, or near it," said the old gent.
"Urbanny! Great kingdom! why I know teu men living aout there; one"s trading, t"other"s keepin" school; may be yeou know "em--Sampson Wheeler"s one, Jethro Jones"s t"other. Jethro"s a cousin of mine; his fa"ther, no, his _mother_ married--"tain"t no matter; my name"s Small,--Appogee Small, and I was talkin"----"
"About the hog crop, Cincinnatty Pork-houses."
"Ye-a-a-s; wall, I went eout West last fall, stopped at Cincinnatty--teu weeks. Dreadful nice place; by gravy, they do deu business there; beats Salvation haow they go it on steamboats--bust ten a day and build six!"
"Is it possible?" says the old gent; "but the hogs----"
"Deu beat all. I went up to the Pork-haouses;--fus thing you meet is a string--"bout a mile long, of big and little critters, greasy and sa.s.sy as sin; buckets and bags full of sc.r.a.ps, tails, ears, snaouts and ribs of hogs. Foller up this line and yeou come to the Pork-haouses, and yeou go in, if they let yeou, and they did me, so in I went, teu an almighty large haouse--big as all aout doors, and a feller steps up to me and says he:--
""Yeou"re a stranger, I s"pose?"
""Yeou deu?" says I.
""Ye-a-a-s," says he, "I s"pose so," and I up and said I was.
""Wall," says he, "ef you want to go over the haouse, we"ll send a feller with you!"
"So I went with the feller, and he took me way back, daown stairs--aout in a lot; a-a-a-nd everlastin" sin! yeou should jist seen the hogs--couldn"t caount "em in three weeks!"
"Good gracious!" exclaims the old gent.
"Fact, by gravy! Sech squealin", kickin" and goin" on; sech cussin" and hollerin", by the fellers pokin" "em in at one eend of the lot and punchin" on "em aout at t"other! Sech a smell of hogs and fat, _brissels_ and hot water, I swan _teu_ pucker, I never did cal"late on, afore!
"Wall, as fast as they driv" "em in by droves, the fellers kept a craowdin" "em daown towards the Pork-haouse; there two fellers kept a shootin" on "em daown, and a hull gang of the all-firedest dirty, greasy-looking fellers _aout_--stuck "em, hauled "em daown, and afore yeou could say Sam Patch! them hogs were yanked aout of the lot--killed--scalded and sc.r.a.ped."
"Mighty quick work, I guess," says the old gent.
"Quick work? Yeou ought to see "em. Haow many hogs deu yeou cal"late them fellers killed and sc.r.a.ped a day?"
"Couldn"t possibly say--hundreds, I expect."
"Hundreds! Grea-a-at King! Why, I see "em kill thirteen hundred in teu hours;--did, by golly!"
"Yeou don"t say so?"
"Yes, _sir_. And a feller with grease enough abaout him to make a barrel of saft soap, said that when they hurried "em up some they killed, scalded and sc.r.a.ped ten thousand hogs in a day; and when they put on the steam, twenty thousand porkers were killed off and cut up in a single day!"
"I want to know!"
"Yes, sir. Wall, we went into the haouse, where they scalded the critters fast as they brought "em in. By gravy, it was amazin" how the _brissels_ flew! Afore a hog knew what it was all abaout, he was bare as a punkin--a hook and tackle in his _snaout_, and up they snaked him on to the next floor. I vow they kept a slidin" and snakin" "em in and up through the scuttles--jest in one stream!
""Let"s go up and see "em cut the hogs," says the feller.
"Up we goes. Abaout a hundred greasy fellers were a hacken on "em up. By golly, it was deth to particular people the way the fat and grease _flew!_ Two _whacks_--fore and aft, as Uncle Jeems used to say--split the hog; one whack, by a greasy feller with an everlasting chunk of sharpened iron, and the hog was quartered--grabbed and carried off to another block, and then a set of savagerous-lookin" chaps layed to and cut and skirted around;--hams and shoulders were going one way, sides and middlins another way; wall, I"m screwed if the hull room didn"t "pear to be full of flying pork--in hams, sides, sc.r.a.ps and greasy fellers--rippin" and a tearin"! Daown in another place they were saltin"
and packin" away, like sin! Daown in the other place they were frying aout the lard--fillin" barrels, from a regular river of fat, coming aout of the everlastin" biggest bilers yeou ever did see, I vow! Now, I asked the feller if sich hurryin" a hog through a course of spraouts helped the pork any, and he said it didn"t make any difference, he s"pected. He said they were not hurryin" then, but if I would come in, some day, when "steam was up," he"d show me quick work in the pork business--knock daown, drag aout, sc.r.a.pe, cut up, and have the hog in the barrel _before he got through squealin"!_
"h.e.l.lo! Say!--"Squire, gone?"
The old gent was--_gone_; the _last brick_ hit him!
German Caution
Some ten years since, an old Dutchman purchased in the vicinity of Brooklyn, a snug little farm for nine thousand dollars. Last week, a lot of land speculators called on him to "buy him out." On asking his price, he said he would take "sixty tousand dollars--no less."
"And how much may remain on bond and mortgage?"
"Nine tousand dollars."
"And why not more," replied the would-be purchasers.
"Because der tam place ain"t worth any more."
Ain"t that Dutch.
Ben. McConachy"s Great Dog Sell.
A great many dogmas have been written, and may continue to be written, on dogs. Confessing, once, to a dogmatical regard for dogs, we "went in"
for the canine race, with a zeal we have bravely outgrown; and we live to wonder how men--to say nothing of spinsters of an uncertain age--can heap money and affections upon these four-legged brutes, whose sole utility is to doze in the corner or kennel, terrify stray children, annoy hors.e.m.e.n, and keep wholesome meat from the stomachs of many a poor, starving beggar at your back gate. There is no use for dogs in the city, and precious little _use_ for them any where else; and as _Boz_ says of oysters--you always find a preponderance of dogs where you find the most poor people. Philadelphia"s the place for dogs; in the suburbs, especially after night, if you escape from the onslaught of the rowdies, you will find the dogs a still greater and more atrocious nuisance. No rowdy, or gentleman at large, in the _Quaker City_, feels _finished_, without a lean, lank, hollow dog trotting along at their heels; while the butchers and horse-dealers revel in a profusion of mastiffs and dastardly curs, perfectly astounding--to us. This brings us to a short and rather pithy story of a dog _sell_.
Some years ago, a knot of men about town, gentlemen highly "posted up"
on dogs, and who could talk _hoss_ and dog equal to a Lord Bentick, or Hiram Woodruff, or "Acorn," or Col. Bill Porter, of the "Spirit," were congregated in a famous resort, a place known as _Hollahan"s_. A dog-fight that afternoon, under the "Linden trees," in front of the "State House," gave rise to a spirited debate upon the result of the battle, and the respective merits of the two dogs. Words waxed warm, and the disputants grew boisterously eloquent upon dogs of high and low degree,--dogs they had read of, and dogs they had seen; and, in fact, we much doubt, if ever before or since--this side of "Seven Dials" or St.
Giles", there was a more thorough and animated discussion, on dogs, witnessed.
An old and rusty codger, one whose outward bruises might have led a disciple of _Paley_ to imagine they had caused a secret enjoyment within, sat back in the nearest corner, towards the stove, a most attentive auditor to the thrilling debate. Between his outspread feet, a dog was coiled up, the only indifferent individual present, apparently unconcerned upon the subject.
"Look here," says the old codger, tossing one leg over t"other, and taking an easy and convenient att.i.tude of observation; "look here, boys, you"re talkin" about _dogs!_"
"Dogs?" says one of the most prominent speakers.