148. The butcher, the next day, cuts the hog up; and then the house is _filled with meat_! Souse, griskins, blade-bones, thigh-bones, spare-ribs, chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use one after the other, and the last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks. But about this time, it is more than possible that the Methodist parson will pay you a visit. It is remarked in America, that these gentry are attracted by the squeaking of the pigs, as the fox is by the cackling of the hen. This may be called slander; but I will tell you what I did know to happen. A good honest careful fellow had a spare-rib, on which he intended to sup with his family after a long and hard day's work at coppice-cutting. Home he came at dark with his two little boys, each with a nitch of wood that they had carried four miles, cheered with the thought of the repast that awaited them. In he went, found his wife, the Methodist parson, and a whole troop of the sisterhood, engaged in prayer, and on the table lay scattered the clean-polished bones of the spare-rib! Can any reasonable creature believe, that, to save the soul, God requires us to give up the food necessary to sustain the body? Did Saint Paul preach this? He, who, while he spread the gospel abroad, _worked himself_, in order to have it to give to those who were unable to work? Upon what, then, do these modern saints; these evangelical gentlemen, found their claim to live on the labour of others. 149. All the other parts taken away, the two sides that remain, and that are called _flitches_, are to be cured for _bacon_. They are first rubbed with salt on their insides, or flesh sides, then placed, one on the other, the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the _brine_; for, to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not lie sopping in brine; which gives it that sort of taste which barrel-pork and sea-jonk have, and than which nothing is more villanous. Every one knows how different is the taste of fresh, dry salt, from that of salt in a dissolved state. The one is savoury, the other nauseous. Therefore, _change the salt often_. Once in four or five days. Let it melt, and sink in; but let it not lie too long. Change the flitches. Put that at bottom which was first put on the top. Do this a couple of times. This mode will cost you a great deal more in salt, or rather in _taxes_, than the _sopping mode_; but without it, your bacon will not be sweet and fine, and _will not keep so well_. As to the _time_ required for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on circumstances; the thickness of the flitch, the state of the weather, the place wherein the salting is going on. It takes a longer time for a thick than for a thin flitch; it takes longer in dry, than in damp weather; it takes longer in a dry than in a damp place. But for the flitches of a hog