Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1891 — The Pig in China. [ARTICLE]

The Pig in China.

.Chinese life is a perpetual surprise. Man’s most faithful four-footed friend, the dog, is relegated to the outcast world and his place filled with the more edible pig. Under these auspices, the dog reverts to the ancestral wolf, and is hardly distinguishable from that disagreeable brute, while the hog becomes a distinguished member of society. Every Chinese porker has a name, and answers it, especially when called to meals, as promptly and knowingly as a welltrained watch-dog. He lives with the family, and sleeps either on the foot of his owner’s bed or else in the baby’s crib. After breakfasting en famMle, he sets off on a constitutional walk through the city and suburbs. He makes calls upon other pigs of equal social standing, invades and sobs every garden whose gate may be open, and usually refreshes himself by a walk in the surf on the beach, where he whets his appetite with a dozen oysters on the whole shell and a few defunct fishes.