"Jimmy, I want you to take the dear children out and amuse them a few hours. I know you're so fond of your dear little cousins and what a fine manly boy you are!" So I took them out, though I didn't want to waste my time with little children, for we are responsible for wasting time, and ought to use every minute to improve ourselves.
The boys wanted to see the pigs that belong to Mr. Taylor, who lives next door, so I took them through a hole in the fence, and they looked at the pigs, and one of them said,
"Oh my how sweet they are and how I would like to be a little pig and never be washed and have lots of swill!"
So I said, "Why don't you play you are pigs, and crawl round and grunt? It's just as easy, and I'll look at you."
You see, I thought I ought to amuse them, and that this would be a nice way to teach them to amuse themselves.
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.
"WE'VE BEEN PLAYING WE WERE PIGS, MA."