Leaves for the pig, and arbutus for us! We make a clean sweep down the hillside, "jumping" a rabbit from its form, or bed, under a brush-pile; discovering where a partridge roosts in a low-spreading hemlock; coming upon a snail cemetery, in a hollow hickory stump; turning up a yellow-jacket's nest, built two-thirds underground; tracing the tunnel of a bobtailed mouse in its purposeless windings in the leaf mould; digging into a woodchuck's--
"But come, boys, get after those bags! It is leaves in the hay-rig that we want, not woodchucks at the bottom of woodchuck holes." Two small boys catch up a bag and hold it open, while the third boy stuffs in the crackling leaves. Then I come along with my big feet and pack the leaves in tight, and onto the rig goes the bulging thing!
Exciting? If you can't believe it exciting, hop up on the load and let us jog you home. Swish! bang! thump! tip! turn! joggle! jolt!--Hold on to your ribs! Look out for the stump! Isn't it fun to go leafing? Isn't it fun to do anything that your heart does with you--even though you do it for a pig?
Just watch the pig as we shake out the bags of leaves. See him caper, spin on his toes, shake himself, and curl his tail. That curl is his laugh. We double up and weep when we laugh hard; but the pig can't weep, and he can't double himself up, so he doubles up his tail. There is where his laugh comes off, curling and kinking in little spasms of pure pig joy!
_Boosh! Boosh!_ he snorts, and darts around the pen like a whirlwind, scattering the leaves in forty ways, to stop short--the shortest stop!--and fall to rooting for acorns.
He was once a long-tusked boar of the forest,--this snow-white, sawed-off, pug-faced little porker of mine--ages and ages ago. But he still remembers the smell of the forest leaves; he still knows the taste of the acorn-mast; he is still wild pig in his soul.
And we were once long-haired, strong-limbed savages who roamed the forest hunting him--ages and ages ago. And we, too, like him, remember the smell of the fallen leaves, and the taste of the forest fruits--and of pig, _roast_ pig! And if the pig in his heart is still a wild boar, no less are we, at times, wild savages in our hearts.