HUNTING WOODCHUCKS.
RUFUS and Eddie, with bow and arrows and old Pomp and Dick, started out Friday afternoon to hunt woodchucks. It was not long before 'the dogs were on the scent of one.
This animal generally keeps pretty near its hole; and the one the dogs had started up, made for its retreat, and was soon safe from its pursuers.
Rufus lay down and peeped eagerly in, but chucky was far out of sight in its underground refuge. When you get one into the wall, and try to drive it out, it will chatter its teeth and fight furiously.
A boy once said to his father,—
"I like to kill woodchucks, because they fight back so; but I can't bear to kill rabbits, for they never fight back."
Which habit among boys, that of the woodchuck, ever ready to "fight back," or that of the rabbit, never willing to "fight back," stirs up the most quarrels? Which class, of boys are the most likely to become respected and useful men?
Rob, it is said, never has any trouble with the boys. Every one likes him. So it is not very strange that he gets along well.
"Rob, how is it you never get into scrapes? " said Will Law to him one day. " All the other boys do."
"Oh, it's my plan not to talk back.
When a boy says hard things to me, I just keep still." Not a bad plan, is it? If all the boys would try it, what good times there would be in the school-room, on the play-ground,—everywhere.
Some one asked a little girl who was sitting where she was much crowded, what it was to return good for evil.
She said it was, "when one girl hunches you, not to hunch back."
Yes, it is "fighting and talking and hunching back" that make most of the trouble everywhere.
Well-Spring
