"'WE'VE BEEN PLAYING PIGS, MA.'"
Well, they got down on all fours and ran round and grunted, until they began to get tired of it, and then wanted to know what else pigs could do; so I told them that pigs generally rolled in the mud, and the more mud a pig could get on himself the happier he would be, and that there was a mud puddle in our back yard that would make a pig cry like a child with delight.
The boys went straight to that mud puddle, and they rolled in the mud until there wasn't an inch of them that wasn't covered with mud so thick that you would have to get a crowbar to pry it off.
Just then Aunt Sarah came to the door and called them, and when she saw them she said, "Good gracious what on earth have you been doing?" and Tommy, that's the oldest boy, said,
"We've been playing we were pigs ma and it's real fun and wasn't Jimmy good to show us how?"
I think they had to boil the boys in hot water before they could get the mud off, and their clothes have all got to be sent to the poor people out West whose things were all lost in the great floods. If you'll believe it, I never got the least bit of thanks for showing the boys how to amuse themselves, but Aunt Sarah said that I'd get something when father came home, and she wasn't mistaken. I'd rather not mention what it was that I got, but I got it mostly on the legs, and I think bamboo canes ought not to be sold to fathers any more than poison.
I was going to tell why I should like to be an animal; but as it is getting late, I must close.