but it must have been a sore struggle for Mrs. Jameson at least to
swallow instruction, for she had the confidence of an old farmer in
all matters pertaining to a farm.

She, however, did listen readily to one singular piece of information
which brought much ridicule upon them. She chanced to say to Wilson
Gregg, who is something of a wag, and had just sold the Jamesons a
nice little white pig, that she thought that ham was very nice in
alternate streaks of fat and lean, though she never ate it herself,
and only bought the pig for the sake of her mother, who had
old-fashioned tastes in her eating and would have pork, and she
thought that home-raised would be so much healthier.

"Why, bless you, ma'am," said he, "if you want your ham streaky all
you have to do is to feed the pig one day and starve him the next."

The Jamesons tried this ingenious plan; then, luckily for the pig,
old Jonas, who had chuckled over it for a while, revealed the fraud
and put him on regular rations.

I suppose the performance of the Jamesons which amused the village
the most was setting their hens on hard-boiled eggs for sanitary
reasons. That seemed incredible to me at first, but we had it on good
authority--that of Hannah Bell, a farmer's daughter from the West
Corners, who worked for the Jamesons. She declared that she told Mrs.
Jameson that hens could not set to any purpose on boiled eggs; but
Mrs. Jameson had said firmly that they must set upon them or none
at all; that she would not have eggs about the premises so long
otherwise; she did not consider it sanitary. Finally, when the eggs
would not hatch submitted to such treatment, even at her command, she