This has been a mild dry winter. The farmers are very anxious for snow to cover the wheat; so the magistrate posted a proclamation stopping the slaughter of animals for food, thus proclaiming a kind of fast. It so happened that the next day a farmer, pushed by his creditors, Killed his hog and carried it to the street for sale. The yamen runners calmly walked off with his pork, and told him to come to the yamen if he wanted it weighed and paid for. When he found the reason! for this treatment, he shouldered his empty baskets and went crying down the street.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.