We passed, therefore, as if mutually
invisible.
I can nowise explain what sort of whim, prank, or perversity it was,
that, after all these leave-takings, induced me to go to the pigsty,
and take leave of the swine! There they lay, buried as deeply among
the straw as they could burrow, four huge black grunters, the very
symbols of slothful ease and sensual comfort. They were asleep,
drawing short and heavy breaths, which heaved their big sides up and
down. Unclosing their eyes, however, at my approach, they looked
dimly forth at the outer world, and simultaneously uttered a gentle
grunt; not putting themselves to the trouble of an additional breath
for that particular purpose, but grunting with their ordinary
inhalation. They were involved, and almost stifled and buried alive,
in their own corporeal substance. The very unreadiness and
oppression wherewith these greasy citizens gained breath enough to
keep their life-machinery in sluggish movement appeared to make them
only the more sensible of the ponderous and fat satisfaction of their
existence. Peeping at me an instant out of their small, red, hardly
perceptible eyes, they dropt asleep again; yet not so far asleep but
that their unctuous bliss was still present to them, betwixt dream
and reality.
"You must come back in season to eat part of a spare-rib," said Silas
Foster, giving my hand a mighty squeeze. "I shall have these fat
fellows hanging up by the heels, heads downward, pretty soon, I tell
you!"
"O cruel Silas, what a horrible idea!" cried I.
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