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.