lone and unprotected widow? It is not with swine as with poultry or cattle, for the pig can be eaten up from end to end; even his skin makes crackling, and nothing need be left behind. There are no accusing feathers to lie about the scene of larcenous revel, as is the case when hens have been devoured by stealth, and no bulky hide and horns to get rid of on the sty, as happens whenever robbers irregularly consume a neighbor’s cow or calf. Again, a widow is, as a rule, a person who lives alone — I confidently appeal to all story-books. to support this statement — and, except for such assistance as her cat can give her, is virtually defenceless at midnight against a number of armed and determined men. A widow’s pig is therefore, and beyond all doubt, just the very thing to get itself stolen, and indeed we would venture to say that, as a matter of fact, it always is stolen.
Is it not natural, then, in children to believe implicitly the story we refer to? As for the other incidents of it — those in which the bear takes a prominent part — they, too, are exactly such as might be expected to occur frequently under similar circumstances.
A poor bear-leader on his way to the neighboring town is benighted, on a stormy evening, in a solitary place — just such a place as widows live in — and, knowing from a large and varied experience of men and cities that widows are kind of heart, he intercedes for a night’s lodging for himself and his beast. It is no sooner asked than granted. The widow turns the cat off the hearth to make room for the man, and the pig out of his sty to make room for the bear. The cat and the pig grumble, of course, at having to make their own arrangements for the night; but, at any rate, the sacred duties of hospital-
