Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

&. + ee ION By GORTON CARRUTH S one approached Taug’s Hotel from A the maple shaded street it seemed to carry out perfectly the village’s general scheme of sleepy restfulness. Half a dozen male guests lounged on the porch in the easiest of clothes and attitudes, and listened to the drawling narrative of Abner Hitchcock. He sat on the top step, his back against a pillar, one long, lanky leg stretched along the crest of the steps, the other sprawling down them until his foot touched the flagstone at the bottom. His hat was in his lap, his entire body was per- fectly at rest—except for his lips; peace and the warm sun illumined his features. His voice was produced without effort, seem- ing to be, in fact, as much a part of his gentle breathing as a cat’s purr does of hers. “I don’t doubt for a minute,” he said, “that this feller down in Pennsylvany has been able to train his hog like you say he has, it being well known to anybody that has ever studied the hog that he is a mighty intelligent critter; though gen’rally folks neglect his education something terrible, preferring to let him run into pork rather than polish, as you might say. Yes, I reckon there ain’t any other animal that has as few opportunities open to him as a hog. He don’t enjoy none of the higher advantages. But take a hog and put ina little time training him, as this Pennsyl- vany man done, and there ain’t any reason why he wouldn’t make a good bird dog, so to speak, and point partridges or any other birds, though I wouldn’t go so fur as to say that he’d always get the kink out of his tail when he pointed. “Well, now, come to think of it, there was a hog a good deal like that over here to Cotton Hollow a few years back, be- longing to Milt Tucker, him that run the tannery and dyed all the trout in Bull Crick the color of shoe leather. But Milt’s hog wan’t a bird hog, he having been brought up with a litter of blood- hounds and having picked up their knack 889 Comiclbooks.€©