CHAP. IV.[ToC]
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?