SIM HOLMAN'S HOG.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2167, 29 May 1886, Page 5 (Supplement)

SIM HOLMAN'S HOG.

I had not been local editor of the Bugle very long before I discovered that there were lots of people who were willing to help in moulding public opinion, if I would let them. Some of them seemed to think that they had right to do so. In Texas, as elsewhere, there are any number of queer roosters who think that the editor ot the local paper wears the habiliments of poverty, and nibbles at the Hea- bitten crackers and pallid cheese of the free lunch counter for no other purpose thau to furnish Thomas, Richard and Henry with facilities for ventilating their private grievances in his paper. The worst one I ever saw was Sim Holman, who had a ranch on Caleveras Creek, and who came to town once a week to transact business, a part of which was getting drunk, and giving me advice as to how to write local items. One afternoon while at work at m}' desk there was a smell of whisky in the air, and a few minutes later on in came Sim Holman, shoving his whisky-laden breast in front of himself, so to speak. It was evident that he had something on his mind besides whisky. He sat down very close to me, and although I managed to shut ofF soir.e of the distillery aroma with a palm-leat fan, I got enough of it to make me think I was in Austin during a session of the Legislature. He was just drunk enough to talk fluently. He remarked : — " There's a hatched - raced Yankee living near my ranch who should be denounced by the Bugle as an enemy to the South. He has swindled me in a hog trade. You can draw a little, can't you ?' " Just a little." " I want you to draw some pictures of the hog he sold me. He sold me a razor-back for a Berkshire. He sold me one of those slab-aided razor-backs that prowls about the woods, living on acorn 3, but can spare time to climb under the fences and help harvest the corn crop, rather than let it spoil for want of attention. It was one of them pigs that is so thin it can't crawl through a little hole if you tie a knot on the end of its tail. That's the kind of a swine that Yankee abolitionist sold mo for a fullblood Birkshire." " I suppose you drank a glass of cold water," I remarked : "and not being used to ib, you got so drunk you couldn't tell a razor-back hog from a bronze statue of Niobe. If you don't know anything more about hogs than that, you are fooling away your time farming. You ought to edit a stock-raisiuc journal." "I wasn't drunk," replied Sim Holman : "I was as sober as I am now. I gues3 I can tell you one kind of a hog from another. Your name is Sweet. I don't mistake you for anybody else. But as lam saying, that slabsided hog, built Swiss cottage style of architecture, wanted to rub his back on something, and not knowing any better, he allayed the irritation by rubbing against a beehive. "The bees," continued Sun, "happened to be in. They just dropped whatever they were at, and proceeded to entertain their visitor. The hog sang for them a plaintive ditty. " Well, the busy little bees not only improved the shining hour, but they also improved the breed of that pig. When you were a boy, and got stung by the bees on the exposed parts, they swelled all up. You see that thin, razor-back hog was exposed all over, so he swelled up all over, until h» looked fat and plump like a Berkshire hog. "I happened to come along, and that cussed Yankee incendiary sold me that hog for thoroughbred swine. In a few days he began to fall off as the swelling went down, and now he is the same old razor-back he always was. If the press of the country doesn't propose to redress those kind of wrongs, it has no lofty mission any more."

THB PIUME OP SCMMKK TIME. The golden summer time Again is. near its prime, The meadows and the orchards are in bloom, bloom, bloom ; And with the early apple The small boy hooii will grapple, And cramps will bring him very near the tomb, tomb, tomb. — Boston Courier. *i What word is that composed of five letters from which if you take two one remains?— Stone. How often do we hear a man joke his wife about getting married j .second time, or a wife perpetrate the same 6orf of ghastly pleasantry atherhu^baud. They would not do it if they were to think but h moment. Did you ever hear u wife joke übout the death of her child, or her mother, or her brother, sister or father? No, no. But society i* running over with those who joke about the death of their husbands. It is the most thoughtless s6rt of humour ever invented. It is trifling with the most serious subject on earth.