Prose Fancies | Page 2

form's sake; for he seldom does more with it than tickle the gravely
striding posteriors of the quaint little people. He is wise as he is kind,
for he knows that he is driving quicksilver. The least undue coercion,
the least sudden start, and they will be off like spilled marbles, in
eleven different directions. Sometimes occasion arises for prompt
action: when the poet of the family dreams he discerns the promised
land through the bottom of a gate, and is bent on squeezing his way
under, and the demoralisation of the whole eleven seems imminent.
Then, unconsciously applying the wisdom of Solomon, the driver deals
a smart flick to the old mother. Seeing her move on, and reflecting that
she carries all the provisions of the party, her children think better of
their romance, and gambol after her, taking a gamesome pull at her
teats from high spirits.
The man never seems to get angry with them. He is smiling gently to
himself all the time, as he softly and leisurely walks behind them.
Indeed, wherever this moving nursery of young life passes, it awakens
tenderness. The man who drove the gig so rapidly a little way off
suddenly slows down, and, with a sympathetic word, walks his horse
gingerly by. Every pedestrian stops and smiles, and on every face

comes a transforming tenderness, a touch of almost motherly sweetness.
So dear is young life to the eye and heart of man.
A few weeks hence these same pedestrians will pass these same pigs
with no emotion, beyond, possibly, that produced by the sweet savour
of frying ham. Their naïveté, their charming baby quaintness, will have
departed for ever. Their features, as yet but roguishly indicated, will
have become set and hidebound; their soft little snouts will be ringed,
and hard as a fifth hoof; their dainty little ears--veritable silk
purses--will have grown long and bristly: in short, they will have lost
that ineffable tender bloom of young life which makes them quite a
touching sight to-day. Strange that loss of charm which comes with
development in us all, pigs included. A tendency to pigginess, as in
these youngsters, a tendency to manhood in the prattling and crowing
babe, are both hailed as charming: but the full-grown pig! the
full-grown man! Alas! in each case the charm seems to flee with the
advent of bristles.
But let us return to the driver.
Under his arm he carries a basket, from which now and again proceed
suppressed squeaks and grunts. It is 'the rickling,' the weakling, of the
family. It will probably find an early death, and be embalmed in sage
and onions. The man has already had an offer for it--from 'Mr. Lamb.'
Mr. Lamb! Yes, Mr. Lamb at Six-Elm Farm. 'Oh! I see.' But was it not
a startling coincidence?
It has taken half an hour to come from the old bridge to the cross-roads,
barely half a mile. And now, good-bye, funny little silken-coated
piglets; good-bye, grave old mother. Ge-whoop! Good-bye, gentle
driver. As you move behind your charge with that tender smile, with
that burden safely pressed beneath your arm, I seem to have had a
vision of the Good Shepherd.
II
Down by the river there is, as yet, little sign of spring. Its bed is all
choked with last year's reeds, trampled about like a manger. Yet its

running seems to have caught a happier note, and here and there along
its banks flash silvery wands of palm. Right down among the shabby
burnt-out underwood moves the sordid figure of a man. He seems the
very genius loci. His clothes are torn and soiled, as though he had slept
on the ground. The white lining of one arm gleams out like the slashing
in a doublet. His hat is battered, and he wears no collar. I don't like
staring at his face, for he has been unfortunate. Yet a glimpse tells me
that he is far down the hill of life, old and drink-corroded at fifty. He is
miserably gathering sticks--perhaps a little job for the farm close by.
He probably slept in the barn there last night, turned out drunk from the
public-house. He will probably do and be done by likewise to-night.
How many faggots to the dram? one wonders. What is he thinking as
he rustles about disconsolately among the bushes? Of what is he
dreaming? What does he make of the lark up there? But I notice he
never looks at it. Perhaps he cannot bear to. For who knows what is in
the heart beneath that poor soiled coat? If you have hopes, he may have
memories. Some day your hopes will be memories too--birds that have
flown away, flowers long since withered.
III
A short way further along I come