is trimmed; he is then salted, branded, and packed; his lard is carefully carried off; an obituary notice of him is entered in the books, and a procession then starts with him and a number of fellow pigs down to the levée, where a steamer is yelling out at the top of her whistle that she "won't wait one minute longer, and if those hogs are not down in precisely fifty-nine seconds, she'll start right away." It is while on his way to the wharf that the pig is said to become aware of his dissolution, and indeed one can hardly blame hog or anybody else for losing his presence of mind for a short time-under such exciting circumstances.

One long procession of pigs is walking into these establishments all day long, and all day long another procession is emerging in barrels. Some establishments kill at the almost incredible rate of forty thousand a month. It would be well if the same organization, or at least similar perfection of system, could be introduced into the municipal affairs of Cincinnati, for it rivals London in its number of independent corporations. It has no less than seven mayors and seven councils, over seven distinct districts. One of their own men has propounded the following:

"If one mayor and corporation in a city of a

million and a half" (New York) "steal ten millions of dollars per annum, how much will seven mayors and seven corporations appropriate' in a city of three hundred thousand inhabitants?" A very nice little sum in "Compound Proportion" indeed.

CHAPTER XXI.

CINCINNATI TO MEMPHIS.-PIGS' VICISSITUDES.

HE Ohio river, conscious, no doubt, and delighted at the eulogies I had be

stowed upon it on a previous occasion, leaped into something like magical beauty on the second day of January, magical, because the transition was so rapid and unexpected, as to be quite startling, almost bewildering. Like one who, after groping through dark, damp caverns, becomes confused and dazzled on suddenly emerging into the warmth and sunlight, so an inhabitant of dreary Cincinnati, having during the last fortnight of the year almost forgotten, amid the dull lugubriousness of the dark, smoky city, that such things as light and beauty existed, opens his or her eyes on a bright, sunny, Maylike morning, to feel the warm wind kissing the light, stray tresses, instead of straightening them into damp locks around one's face, and gazes in perplexity on the so lately muddy

waters of the Ohio, now reflecting in all their brightness the deep blue of the sky. The sombre hue of the leafless woods on the precipitous bluffs, the white delicate branches of the sycamore, and the willows on the river's brink, are frizzy and brown as a man's well-trimmed beard. The small white towns nestling in the rifts between the hills, are brilliantly gilded by the golden gleam of the morning sun. Such a day was the second of January, marvellous, beautiful, and surprising.

But what of the climate, where the thermometer ranges in forty-eight hours from zero to sixty-five or seventy degrees? where one day the river is covered with large masses of floating ice, and the next rippling in golden-capped wavelets, where we could sit on deck and breathe the sweet air, after being stifled by the clammy compound substance called atmosphere in Cincinnati! From the winding of the river the hills on either side continually form themselves into varied and picturesque outlines. The weather continued delicious, and one of the most magnificent sunsets I have ever seen out of Egypt met our delighted view as we put in for freight at the small town of Cayceville.

This town lies in a little flat nook, which seems to have once formed part of the river bed. Behind it, the rocks rise clear and precipitous,

in small square blocks, resembling masonry, and forming a semicircle round the town, which has thus the appearance of a large dry-dock, into which houses instead of ships had found their way. I should fancy it is not so picturesque a spot when the river rises and floods it midway; but bathed only in the brilliant violet hues of sunset, it looked like fairy-land, hemmed in by the great hills. From the opposite side of the river, where the sun was setting, a brilliant group of gorgeous red and gold clouds, in the form of the Prince of Wales' plume, shot over the clear blue sky. The feathers, stretching across the river, with the tips bending over the purple-tinted town, resembled the halo floating round angels' wings, over a beloved Bethlehem. This effect lasted about twenty minutes, just as long as we stayed. In the dim distance, when the sun had sunk, Cayceville returned to a facsimile of a town in a dry-dock. So closed our first day on the Ohio.

It is from three to four days' sail, eight hundred miles from Cincinnati to Memphis, our destination. The beautiful weather lasted throughout. Even Cairo, in its muddy misery, looked up somewhat brightly as we remained for half an hour to take in freight. Our next place of detention was one of the hundred and one Columbuses that are sprinkled over the United States.