CHIPS FROM BIRCH WOODS.

One of the worst things I ever heard of in the history of Mike, according to the best of my recollection, was the way he served Billy Birch’s dog. You must know something about this Billy Birch. Burt was his real name. But it was changed into Birch by his neighbors, for a reason which I will give you by and bye.

Mr. Burt was a pretty good sort of a man, in his own estimation, but not greatly or generally beloved by his neighbors. He was a church-going man, and had a knack, somehow or other, of getting along decently with the forms the outside garments, so to speak of religion. It was really astonishing how glibly he would talk about religion. But as to the practical part of it, he did not succeed as well. That was up-hill work for the old man.

He found it exceedingly difficult to keep himself “unspotted from the world.” Some of his nearest neighbors thought they could count a great many worldly spots upon him. I don’t know how that was, as I never was acquainted with the man, and ought not to judge him too harshly. Indeed, Uncle Frank must endeavor to keep in mind, that with what measure we mete it shall be measured to us again. But from all the shreds and patches of his history that have come down to the present day, Mr. Birch does seem to have been a selfish man, and a great deal too fond of money.

My young friend, it is one of the most difficult things in this world, to act up to the spirit of the golden rule of our Lord, and do to others as we would have them do to us, when we are as full as we can hold of selfishness. You may lay that thought up in your memory.

Billy Birch found that truth out. What did he care how many newly-planted hills of corn and rows of peas his hens might scratch up, provided the corn was not his corn, and the peas were not his peas, and provided he did not have to suffer for the scratching? Not a mill. He would sit, smoking his pipe for he was a great smoker in the old, straight-backed oak chair on the stoop, as cool as a cucumber, while the biggest rooster on his premises, the lord of the whole barn-yard, was leading a regiment of hens and petty roosters in a crusade upon Squire Chapman’s corn-field across the way; and if the Squire or one of his boys came over to inform him what havoc the hens were making, and to ask him what to do with the troublesome creatures, the old man would perhaps take his pipe out of his mouth, and, after slowly puffing out a cloud of smoke, would say, “Why, drive them out, to be sure!”

What did he care, if his old mare who, by the way, was a very nervous sort of a mare, and could not stay long in one spot what did he care, if the old creature did jump over the six-rail fence around the good parson’s field of clover, and eat what she wanted, and trample down, in her nervous way of doing things, a good share of the rest of the clover? Why, it didn’t hurt him any. The old miser! It wasn’t his field of clover that Katy trampled down. And besides, didn’t he pay his minister’s tax? and didn’t the minister and his family live in better style than he and his family could afford to live in?

Katy loved clover. He wasn’t to blame for that, and he didn’t know that Katy was to blame. It was a very natural taste, that of his old mare. And why didn’t the parson, he should like to know, build his fence higher, if he didn’t want his clover eaten up by other people’s horses?

What was it to Billy Birch, if his dog did kill a neighbor’s sheep, now and then? What did he care, what should he care? If they were his own sheep, that would alter the case. But Cæsar never killed his master’s sheep. Wasn’t that kind in Cæsar? And as to this sheep-biting habit of his, why it is the nature of dogs to kill sheep. Cæsar must kill somebody’s sheep; and if he hadn’t picked out a good fat one from this flock, it would have been somebody else’s flock. What is the use in making such a fuss about a sheep or two? The loss of one sheep won’t break any body. What can’t be cured, must be endured. People must take care of their sheep, if they don’t want them to be killed.

That is the way this selfish, narrow-minded farmer reasoned and talked. You can see, plainly enough, that he was not the sort of man to be very much respected in the neighborhood. He was not respected. In fact, there was not, in all the parish, a more generally unpopular man than Billy Birch.

The boys, I have heard, bore him a grudge of long standing. It related to the huckleberries and hazel nuts in the old man’s birch woods. There were bushels of huckleberries, and almost as many hazel nuts, in those woods. But would you have thought of such a thing? Mr. Birch forbade the boys picking any of his huckleberries or hazel nuts. Ever so many huckleberries decayed on the bushes every year, or were left to be harvested by the birds, because Mr. Birch’s family could not pick them all themselves, and he was so tight that he would not let any body else pick them. He was like the dog in the manger, you see. He could not eat the hay himself, and he would not let any body else eat it.

But the meanest thing that I ever heard of his doing, was this: In these same woods the woods where the huckleberries and hazel nuts grew there were great multitudes of birch trees, of different species and among the rest, some of that species which goes by the name, among children, of black birch. I need not tell any of my country readers about this kind of birch. They know it well enough. They have eaten birch bark, many a time; and, for ought I know, some of them have felt a tingling sensation in the region of the back and legs, brought about by the use of birch twigs in the hands of some schoolmaster.

Well, Moses Ramble was crossing Billy Birch’s woods one day in the spring of the year. For awhile, he whistled along, as merry-hearted as the blue birds that had just returned from their southern tour, and who were chirping on the branches over his head, breaking off, now and then, a few sprigs of birch, from the trees along his path. By and bye, he sat down on the fence, to rest himself, still going on with his whistling, at intervals, when his mouth was not too much occupied with the birch to interfere with the music.

While the merry young fellow was sitting here, feeling at peace with all the world, and not dreaming but all the world was at peace with him, he heard a slight rustling behind him, and, looking over his shoulder, whom should he see but Billy Birch himself, leaning against a chestnut tree, and looking as if he were angry enough to bite in two a hoe handle.

What on earth the man was doing there, history does not inform us, though it used to be more than hinted among the younger citizens in that neighborhood, that he was prowling about in those woods as a spy on the movements of the boys. They said he was just the man for such business.

Moses did not like the appearance of the face that was lowering on him; and, although he was innocent of the slightest intention of doing any harm on the man’s premises, he thought it would be safer for him to walk off than it would be to stay there. So he leaped from the fence, and began, leisurely, to walk home.

“Stop, you young heathen!” said Billy Birch.

The little fellow did stop, and stood as still as the old chestnut tree, against which the lord of those woods was leaning.

“What are you munching there, sir?”

Moses, having no suspicion at all that he had been doing any harm to the estate of the old man, replied, frankly and plainly, that he was eating birch.

“Aha!” said the farmer, “you are, eh? I’ll teach you to eat my birch. I’ll give you as much birch as you will want for a fortnight!”

And he took the twig which Moses was gnawing out of his hands, and whipped him with it, until he made the poor fellow cry out with pain and mortification.

“There, you thief!” he said, after flogging him to his heart’s content, “that will teach you to steal my birch, I guess.”

From that day the selfish farmer began to be called Birch, in that section of the country; and it was not many months before his name was almost as effectually changed as if he had applied to the legislature of the state to have that body change it for him.