  In speaking of the domestic and useful animals of Laramie, it would not be right to overlook the hog. I do not allude to him as useful at all, but he is very domestic. He is more so than the people seem to demand. I never saw hogs with such a strong domestic tendency as the Laramie hogs have. They have a deep and abiding love for home, all of them, and they don't care whose home it is either. There is a tremendous pressure of hog to the square inch here. The town is filled with homeless, unhappy and starving hogs. They run between your legs during the day, and stand in your front yard and squeal during the night. Most of them are orphans. When Thanksgiving comes it will bring no joy to them. It will be like any other day. About all the fun they have is to root a gate off the hinges, and then run off with a table cloth in their mouths. We should not be too severe, however, on the hog. What means has he of knowing that there is a city ordinance against his running about town? Kind reader, do you think the innocent little hog would openly violate a law of the land if he knew of its existence? Certainly not. It is pardonable ignorance on the part of the hog, the same as it is with the Indian, which causes him to break over the statutes and ordinances of his country. Our plan, therefore, is to civilize the hog. Build churches and school houses for him. Educate him and teach him the ways of industry. Put a spade and a plow at his disposal, and teach him to till the soil. The natural impulses of the hog are good, but he has been imposed upon by dishonest white men. Long before man came with his modern appliances, the hog was here. He owned the land and used it to raise acorns and grub-worms on. But the white man has entered on the fair domain, and, regardless of his solemn treaties, has taken this land and asks that the hog, the original owner of the soil, shall be penned up in a little reservation ten feet by twelve, made of cheap pine slabs. Every principle of right, and justice, and equity, and humanity cries out against this tyrannical action on the part of the white man. Men who would scorn to do a dishonorable act, ordinarily, snatch the broad lands that were formerly owned by the hog, away from him, and deliberately go to raising wheat on them. This is not right. We should remember that the hog has certain rights which we are bound to respect. Did you ever stop to think, dear reader, that the hog of the present day is but a poor, degraded specimen of the true aboriginal hog, before civilization had encroached upon him? Then do not join the popular cry against him. Once he was pure as the beautiful snow.
|
|
