English essays -- 20th century; Short stories, English
"Every day. I'm tired of it. I shrink from every new man I meet. I wait
nervously for the word 'coal,' feeling that I shall scream when it
comes. Oh, I want a vote or something. I don't know what I want, but I
_hate_ men! Why should they think that everything they say to us
is funny or clever or important? Why should they talk to us as if we were
children? Why should they take it for granted that it's our duty to
_listen_ always?"
I rose with dignity. Dash it all, who had been doing the listening for
the last half-hour?
"You are run down," I said. "What you want is a tonic."
Quite between ourselves, though, I really think--
But no. We men must stick together.
THE LEGEND OF HI-YOU
I
In the days of Good King Carraway (dead now, poor fellow, but he had a
pleasant time while he lasted) there lived a certain swineherd commonly
called Hi-You. It was the duty of Hi-You to bring up one hundred and
forty-one pigs for his master, and this he did with as much enthusiasm as
the work permitted. But there were times when his profession failed him.
In the blue days of summer Princes and Princesses, Lords and Ladies,
Chamberlains and Enchanters would ride past him and leave him vaguely
dissatisfied with his company, so that he would remove the straw from his
mouth and gaze after them, wondering what it would be like to have as
little regard for a swineherd as they. But when they were out of sight,
he would replace the straw in his mouth and fall with great diligence to
the counting of his herd and such other duties as are required of the
expert pigtender, assuring himself that, if a man could not be lively
with one hundred and forty-one companions, he must indeed be a
poor-spirited sort of fellow.
Now there was one little black pig for whom Hi-You had a special
tenderness. Just so, he often used to think, would he have felt towards
a brother if this had been granted to him. It was not the colour of the
little pig nor the curliness of his tail (endearing though this was), nor
even the melting expression in his eyes which warmed the swineherd's
heart, but the feeling that intellectually this pig was as solitary among
the hundred and forty others as Hi-You himself. Frederick (for this was
the name which he had given to it) shared their food, their sleeping
apartments, much indeed as did Hi-You, but he lived, or so it seemed to
the other, an inner life of his own. In short, Frederick was a soulful
pig.
There could be only one reason for this: Frederick was a Prince in
disguise. Some enchanter--it was a common enough happening in those
days--annoyed by Frederick's father, or his uncle, or even by Frederick
himself, had turned him into a small black pig until such time as the
feeling between them had passed away. There was a Prince Frederick of
Milvania who had disappeared suddenly; probably this was he. His
complexion was darker now, his tail more curly, but the royal bearing was
unmistakable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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