THE WAR PIG AT HAWORTH—A LAUGHABLE STORY
The marionettes having come to their end, and your humble servant being now practically out of a situation, he began to bestir his imagination for some other line which he might enter into in the show business. It was one morning while I was walking along Back-lane, at the top end of the town, that I “fell in luck.” Old John Malloy kept a grocer’s shop there—the Ship Inn now marks the spot—and I heard from him that he had a small litter of pigs. I saw them, and found among them a black pig—a puny, rickety, and most dejected-looking creature. I asked John what he would take for the best and the worst, and although he did not wish to part with the best pig, he was not very particular in that respect with regard to the worst—“the leetle blackie.” For this he said he would take a shilling, and after bargaining with John I got the pig for ten-pence. I took the pig away with me in an empty herring-box, and consulted my friend, John Spencer. I said, “John; we’ll take this pig to Haworth, and show it as the War Pig from South America.” John laughed at the idea, but heartily agreed with it. In the next place I got “on tick” a piece of calico several yards long, and with some lampblack I painted in bold type on the calico the words, “Come and see the War Pig from South America, 2d. each.” Then Spencer and I engaged the large garret at the Fleece Inn, Haworth. It was a large room, holding, I should think, a couple of hundreds of people, and was entered by a staircase in the back-yard, separate from the public house proper. Mrs Stangcliffe was the landlady, and she readily allowed us to have the room, I having taken it of her once before. Well, to get to business.