No farmer of the old school plants his corn, cuts his hay, or, especially, kills his pork in the moon’s wane. Therefore swine in his pen are safe for a fortnight after “the full o’ the moon,” lest, perchance, when the summer heats shall have come again, and six stout, hungry “men folks” assemble round his board, waiting with moist brows and watering lips, impatient for the wonted unctuous noon-day meal, the mighty slab of “strange flesh” which, erewhile, was with difficulty forced into the capacious pot, be found, upon the raising of the lid, shrunken, withered, boiled away, curtailed of its fair proportions; all that remains a little “nub,” scarce half enough for one of the voracious, disappointed crew. At such a time, sore is the mortification of the farmer’s buxom wife. Thrifty she means to be, but never stingy. She blusheth as she deposits on the table a huge pewter platter, covered, apparently, with naught but turnips, potatoes and other “garden sauce.” She answereth deprecatingly to her husband’s wondering inquiry, if she has “forgotten the pork.” Forgotten it! no! nor ever will! The ghost of the vanished meat now stareth her in the face! Fork in hand, she wipeth her flushed brow with her plump, bare arm, and pointeth to the pile of smoking potatoes, beneath which is buried the shrivelled abortion of a meal. She telleth, while her husband makes a Barmecidical show of carving the bit, how that “pork killed in the old o’ the moon is sure to shrink in the pot.” She glanceth furtively around the board, to see whether any churlish or waggish hind smiles skeptically or disdainfully, or winketh at his neighbor. She calleth hastily to Jane to bring the cider-pitcher, forgotten in the trouble, and hurrieth away to the kitchen to pack up an unusually munificent and toothsome afternoon’s luncheon. There we leave her, and invoke in her behalf the sympathy of Mr. Gliddon. Who so well as he knoweth the embarrassments and disappointments which sometimes follow the taking off the cover?