Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: which he had chalked out for himself. From them he learned more than ordinary mortals could have taught him; and meanwhile the wholesome and quiet life which he led in the forest caused him to increase daily in bodily strength, so that he bid fair to rival Hercules before he arrived at manhood. All this time the Boar Smith in Toad-land. continued to pursue his ravages unchecked and unmolested, and had become more than ever the terror of the surrounding country. In vain did the Druids denounce him: the more they cursed the more he seemed to prosper, and the whole framework of society was shaken by this terrible animal. The effect, moreover, throughout the whole island, was the reverse of agreeable. We have noticed, in the struggles of mankind for supremacy, that when one particular nation has obtained, whether by good fortune or good organization, great military successes, it sometimes happens that the citizens of that nation become puffed up and insolent beyond measure, considering that the mere fact of belonging to that victorious country stamps a man (however intellectually poor or morally imbecile) as something superior to his fellow-creatures, and gives him a right to be as rude and disagreeable as he pleases. Such was at this time the precise result of the Boar's undiminished power. Every pig in the island thought himself far superior to any other animal. The insolence of Pigdom became rapidly intolerable; these unpleasant animals thrust their snouts into everybody else's dish, and England was threatened with a porcine yoke which would inevitably have interfered with that great future which she was destined to achieve in after- years. However, England has never been without her Smith in the hour of danger, and this, the first individual of that illustrious name, set ...