John knew a boy—­a bad enough boy I daresay—­who afterwards became a general in the war, and went to Congress, and got to be a real governor, who also used to be sent to cut brush in the back pastures, and hated it in his very soul; and by his wrong conduct forecast what kind of a man he would be.  This boy, as soon as he had cut about one brush, would seek for one of several holes in the ground (and he was familiar with several), in which lived a white-and-black animal that must always be nameless in a book, but an animal quite capable of the most pungent defense of himself.  This young aspirant to Congress would cut a long stick, with a little crotch in the end of it, and run it into the hole; and when the crotch was punched into the fur and skin of the animal, he would twist the stick round till it got a good grip on the skin, and then he would pull the beast out; and when he got the white-and-black just out of the hole so that his dog could seize him, the boy would take to his heels, and leave the two to fight it out, content to scent the battle afar off.  And this boy, who was in training for public life, would do this sort of thing all the afternoon, and when the sun told him that he had spent long enough time cutting brush, he would industriously go home as innocent as anybody.  There are few such boys as this nowadays; and that is the reason why the New England pastures are so much overgrown with brush.

John himself preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck.  He bore a special grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostility that boys feel for any wild animal.  One day on his way to school a woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase.  The woodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a small apple-tree.  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,