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It is probable that man is no more eager to float free into space than the earth-if it be sentient-is to shake him off; but it would appear that he and it must, like the Siamese twins, consent to endure the disadvantages of a mutually disagreeable intimacy. We submit that it is hardly worth his while to continue “larding the lean earth” with his carcase in the vain endeavour to emulate angels, whom in no respect he at all resembles. Pork on the Hoof.

The motto aut C‘sar aut nullus is principally nonsense, we take it. If one may not be a man, one may, in most cases, be a hog with equal satisfaction to his mind and heart.

There is Thompson Washington Smith, for example (his name is not Thompson, nor Washington, nor yet Smith; we call him so to conceal his real name, which is perhaps Smythe). Now Thompson, there is reason to believe, tried earnestly for some years to be a man. Alas! he began while he was a boy, and got exhausted before he arrived at maturity. He could make no further effort, and manhood is not acquired without a mighty struggle, nor maintained without untiring industry. So having fatigued himself before reaching the starting-point, Thompson Washington did not re-enter the race for manhood, but contented his simple soul with achieving a modest swinehood. He became a hog of considerable talent and promise.

Let it not be supposed that Thompson has anything in common with the typical, ideal hog-him who encrusts his hide with clay, and inhumes his muzzle in garbage. Far from it; he is a cleanly-almost a godly-hog, preternaturally fair of exterior, and eke fastidious of appetite. He is glossy of coat, stainless of shirt, immaculate of trousers. He is shiny of beaver and refulgent of boot. With all, a Hog. Watch him ten minutes under any circumstances and his face shall seem to lengthen and sharpen away, split at the point, and develop an unmistakeable snout. A ridge of bristles will struggle for sunlight under the gloss of his coat. This is your imagination, and that is about as far as it will take you. So long as Thompson Washington, actual, maintains a vertical attitude, Thompson Washington, unreal, will not assume an horizontal one. Your fancy cannot “go the whole hog.”

It only remains to state explicitly to whom we are alluding. Well, there is a stye in the soul of every one of us, in which abides a porker more or less objectionable. We don’t all let him range at large, like Smith, but he will occasionally exalt his visage above the rails of even the most cleverly constructed pen. The best of us are they who spend most time repressing the beast by rapping him upon the nose. The Young Person.

We are prepared, not perhaps to prove, but to maintain, that civilization would be materially aided and abetted by the offer of a liberal reward for the scalps of Young Persons with the ears attached. Your regular Young Person is a living nuisance, whose every act is a provocation to exterminate her. We say “her,” not because, physically considered, the Y. P. is necesarily of the she sex; more commonly is it an irreclaimable male; but morally and intellectually it is an unmixed female. Her virtues are merely milk-and-morality-her intelligence is pure spiritual whey. Her conversation (to which not even her own virtues and intelligence are in any way related) is three parts rain-water that has stood too long and one part cider that has not stood long enough-a sickening, sweetish compound, one dose of which induces in the mental stomach a colicky qualm, followed, if no correctives be taken, by violent retching, coma, and death.

The Young Person vegetates best in the atmosphere of parlours and ball-rooms; if she infested the fields and roadsides like the squirrels, lizards, and mud-hens, she would be as ruthlessly exterminated as they. Every passing sportsman would fill her with duck-shot, and every strolling gentleman would step out of his way to smite off her head with his cane, as one decapitates a thistle. But in the drawing-room one lays off his destructiveness with his hat and gloves, and the Young Person enjoys the same immunity that a sleepy mastiff grants to the worthless kitten campaigning against his nose.