John thought this a most cowardly and unfair retreat, and stood under the tree and taunted the animal and stoned it.Thereupon the woodchuck dropped down on John and seized him by the leg of his trousers.John was both enraged and scared by this dastardly attack;the teeth of the enemy went through the cloth and met; and there he hung.John then made a pivot of one leg and whirled himself around, swinging the woodchuck in the air, until he shook him off; but in his departure the woodchuck carried away a large piece of John's summer trousers-leg.The boy never forgot it.And whenever he had a holiday, he used to expend an amount of labor and ingenuity in the pursuit of woodchucks that would have made his for tune in any useful pursuit.There was a hill pasture, down on one side of which ran a small brook, and this pasture was full of woodchuck-holes.It required the assistance of several boys to capture a woodchuck.It was first necessary by patient watching to ascertain that the woodchuck was at home.When one was seen to enter his burrow, then all the entries to it except one--there are usually three--were plugged up with stones.A boy and a dog were then left to watch the open hole, while John and his comrades went to the brook and began to dig a canal, to turn the water into the residence of the woodchuck.
This was often a difficult feat of engineering, and a long job.
Often it took more than half a day of hard labor with shovel and hoe to dig the canal.But when the canal was finished and the water began to pour into the hole, the excitement began.How long would it take to fill the hole and drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes it seemed as if the hole was a bottomless 1pit.But sooner or later the water would rise in it, and then there was sure to be seen the nose of the woodchuck, keeping itself on a level with the rising flood.
It was piteous to see the anxious look of the hunted, half-drowned creature as--it came to the surface and caught sight of the dog.
There the dog stood, at the mouth of the hole, quivering with excitement from his nose to the tip of his tail, and behind him were the cruel boys dancing with joy and setting the dog on.The poor creature would disappear in the water in terror; but he must breathe, and out would come his nose again, nearer the dog each time.At last the water ran out of the hole as well as in, and the soaked beast came with it, and made a desperate rush.But in a trice the dog had him, and the boys stood off in a circle, with stones in their hands, to see what they called "fair play." They maintained perfect "neutrality" so long as the dog was getting the best of the woodchuck; but if the latter was likely to escape, they "interfered "in the interest of peace and the "balance of power," and killed the woodchuck.This is a boy's notion of justice; of course, he'd no business to be a woodchuck,--an--unspeakable woodchuck."I used the word "aromatic " in relation to the New England soil.
John knew very well all its sweet, aromatic, pungent, and medicinal products, and liked to search for the scented herbs and the wild fruits and exquisite flowers; but he did not then know, and few do know, that there is no part of the globe where the subtle chemistry of the earth produces more that is agreeable to the senses than a New England hill-pasture and the green meadow at its foot.The poets have succeeded in turning our attention from it to the comparatively barren Orient as the land of sweet-smelling spices and odorous gums.
And it is indeed a constant surprise that this poor and stony soil elaborates and grows so many delicate and aromatic products.
John, it is true, did not care much for anything that did not appeal to his taste and smell and delight in brilliant color; and he trod down the exquisite ferns and the wonderful mosses--without compunction.But he gathered from the crevices of the rocks the columbine and the eglantine and the blue harebell; he picked the high-flavored alpine strawberry, the blueberry, the boxberry, wild currants and gooseberries, and fox-grapes; he brought home armfuls of the pink-and-white laurel and the wild honeysuckle; he dug the roots of the fragrant sassafras and of the sweet-flag; he ate the tender leaves of the wintergreen and its red berries; he gathered the peppermint and the spearmint; he gnawed the twigs of the black birch;there was a stout fern which he called "brake," which he pulled up, and found that the soft end "tasted good;" he dug the amber gum from the spruce-tree, and liked to smell, though he could not chew, the gum of the wild cherry; it was his melancholy duty to bring home such medicinal herbs for the garret as the gold-thread, the tansy, and the loathsome "boneset; " and he laid in for the winter, like a squirrel, stores of beechnuts, hazel-nuts, hickory-nuts, chestnuts, and butternuts.But that which lives most vividly in his memory and most strongly draws him back to the New England hills is the aromatic sweet-fern; he likes to eat its spicy seeds, and to crush in his hands its fragrant leaves; their odor is the unique essence of New England.
XVI
JOHN'S REVIVAL
The New England country-boy of the last generation never heard of Christmas.There was no such day in his calendar.If John ever came across it in his reading, he attached no meaning to the word.
If his curiosity had been aroused, and he had asked his elders about it, he might have got the dim impression that it was a kind of Popish holiday, the celebration of which was about as wicked as "card-playing," or being a "Democrat." John knew a couple of desperately bad boys who were reported to play "seven-up" in a barn, on the haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder.He had.