circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of
lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an
elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for
infirm humanity.

Manifold are the uses of rings. Even swine are tamed by them. You
will see a vagrant, hilarious, devastating porker--a full-blooded
fellow that would bleed into many, many fathoms of black pudding--you
will see him, escaped from his proper home, straying in a neighbour's
garden. How he tramples upon the heart's-ease: how, with quivering
snout, he roots up lilies--odoriferous bulbs! Here he gives a
reckless snatch at thyme and marjoram--and here he munches violets
and gilly-flowers. At length the marauder is detected, seized by his
owner, and driven, beaten home. To make the porker less dangerous,
it is determined that he shall be RINGED. The sentence is
pronounced--execution ordered. Listen to his screams!


"Would you not think the knife was in his throat?
And yet they're only boring through his nose!"


Hence, for all future time, the porker behaves himself with a sort of
forced propriety--for in either nostril he carries a ring. It is,
for the greatness of humanity, a saddening thought, that sometimes
men must be treated no better than pigs.

But Mr. Job Caudle was not of these men. Marriage to him was not
made a necessity. No; for him call it if you will a happy chance--a
golden accident. It is, however, enough for us to know that he was