Wednesday was the day set for plucking the geese and all my leisure on Monday and Tuesday was spent in building a pen. Plenty of material from which to construct this edifice was found about the place. I wisely located it at the back of the henhouse which left me only three sides to build. One corner was roofed with the best boards I could find, for I didn't wish my precious pig to suffer from sunstroke or have his bed transformed into a mud-hole when it rained. When the geese were picked to the last feather they could spare, I went with grandmother to select my pig from the litter of sucklings now ready to begin taking their food from the trough. She generously allowed me my choice, and if I did not get the pick of the bunch it was not her fault. I wonder how a girl of nine succeeded in transporting a lusty pig the three quarters of a mile between grandmother's house and ours. I should not like to undertake it now, but my confidence in my ability to do what I wanted done in those days was unlimited. A piece of rope, a stout cudgel, a pair of strong, young arms, and a high disregard of appearances sustained me. I got my treasure home and into his pen--no mean triumph even as viewed by my elder brother who had passed by the pig stage and even the calf stage and entered into the exalted realm of horse ownership. My father was not the "your shoat, my hog" kind of a father. There came a time when he used to say that the girls owned all the cattle and the boys all the horses on the farm. When my pig grew up, I traded it to my father for a fine calf. This calf was the nucleus of my "herd," for I never owned a horse. All through my college course when I needed money, I used to write to father to sell "Rowena" or "Corinne" or "Natty Bumpo." (We named our calves after the people we read about.) There was always a buyer ready at hand and the price paid was strictly in accord with the market quotations. The cow which bought my graduation cap and gown was the last of her race, "Betsy Bobbett," one of the great-great-granddaughters of the calf for which I traded that original pig. No one can deny or doubt that there is profit in pig raising. Pork "on the hoof" is ten cents a pound even as I write these words, with prospects good for going higher. A profit of one hundred per cent. is recorded by growers when the price is only six cents a pound. With the one exception of poultry, hogs bring the quickest returns for investment of any live stock. It is poor economy to keep any animal which cannot pay its board, except for sentiment, and few people keep pigs on that account. If I were beginning again I should not trade my pig for a calf but should raise pigs.