baths to make diving automatic, and beneath each cage was a hole a foot in
diameter. The spectators and participants crowded outside the enclosure,
and the thing was to throw balls, which were hired for the purpose, into
the holes. Nothing could exceed the alert and eager interest taken by the
little pigs in the efforts of the ball-throwers. They quivered on their
little legs; they pressed their little noses against the bars of the cages;
their little eyes sparkled; their tails (the only corkscrews left in
America) curled and uncurled and curled again: and with reason, for
whereas, if you missed--as was only too easy--nothing happened, if you
threw accurately the fun began, and the fun was also theirs.

This is what occurred. First a bell rang and then a spring released the
door of the cage immediately over the hole which your ball had entered, so
that it swung open. The little pig within, after watching the previous
infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had pricked up his
ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile,
irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile
dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid voluptuously down
the plank: to be gathered in at the foot by an attendant and returned to
its cage all ready for another such adventure.

It was for these moments and their concomitant changes of countenance that
you paid your money. To taste the triumph of good marksmanship was only a
fraction of your joy; the greater part of it consisted in liberating a
little prisoner and setting in motion so much ecstasy.

We do not use baby pigs in this entertaining way in England. At the most we
hunt them greased. But when other beguilements weary we might. The
R.S.P.C.A. could not object, the little pets are so happy. And what a
privilege is theirs, both alive and dead, to enchant creation's lord.