Stories for the Young | Page 6

yourselves with these false distinctions. All property is sacred; and as
the laws of the land are intended to fence in that property, he who
brings up his children to break down any of these fences, brings them
up to certain sin and ruin. He who begins with robbing orchards,
rabbit-warrens, and fish-ponds, will probably end with horsestealing, or
highway robbery. Poaching is a regular apprenticeship to bolder crimes.
He whom I may commit as a boy to sit in the stocks for killing a
partridge, may be likely to end at the gallows for killing a man.
"Observe, you who now hear me, the strictness and impartiality of

justice. I know Giles to be a worthless fellow, yet it is my duty to take
his information; I know Jack Weston to be an honest youth, yet I must
be obliged to make him pay the penalty. Giles is a bad man, but he can
prove this fact; Jack is a worthy lad, but he has committed this fault. I
am sorry for you, Jack; but do not let it grieve you that Giles has played
worse tricks a hundred times, and yet got off, while you were detected
in the very first offence, for that would be grieving because you are not
so great a rogue as Giles. At this moment you think your good luck is
very unequal; but all this will one day turn out in your favor. Giles is
not the more a favorite of heaven because he has hitherto escaped
Botany Bay or the hulks; nor is it any mark of God's displeasure against
you, John, that you were found out in your very first attempt."
Here the good justice left off speaking, and no one could contradict the
truth of what he had said. Weston humbly submitted to his sentence,
but he was very poor, and knew not where to raise the money to pay his
fine. His character had always been so fair, that several farmers present
kindly agreed to advance a trifle each, to prevent his being sent to
prison, and he thankfully promised to work out the debt. The justice
himself, though he could not soften the law, yet showed Weston so
much kindness, that he was enabled, before the year was out, to get out
of this difficulty. He began to think more seriously than he had ever yet
done, and grew to abhor poaching, not merely from fear but from
principle.
We shall soon see whether poaching Giles always got off so
successfully. Here we have seen that worldly prosperity is no sure sign
of goodness; and that "the triumphing of the wicked is short," will
appear in the second part of the Poacher, containing the entertaining
story of the Widow Brown's Apple-tree.

PART II.
HISTORY OF WIDOW BROWN'S APPLE-TREE.
I think my readers are so well acquainted with Black Giles the poacher,

that they will not expect to hear any great good, either of Giles himself,
his wife Rachel, or any of their family. I am sorry to expose their tricks,
but it is their fault, not mine. If I pretend to speak about people at all, I
must tell the truth. I am sure, if folks would but turn about and mend, it
would be a thousand times pleasanter to me to write their histories; as it
is no comfort to tell of any body's faults. If the world would but grow
good, I should be glad enough to tell of it; but till it really becomes so, I
must go on describing it as it is; otherwise I should only mislead my
readers, instead of instructing them. It is the duty of a faithful historian
to relate the evil with the good.
As to Giles and his boys, I am sure old widow Brown has good reason
to remember their dexterity. Poor woman, she had a fine little bed of
onions in her neat and well-kept garden; she was very fond of her
onions, and many a rheumatism has she caught by kneeling down to
weed them in a damp day, notwithstanding the little flannel cloak and
the bit of an old mat which Madam Wilson gave her, because the old
woman would needs weed in wet weather. Her onions she always
carefully treasured up for her winter's store; for an onion makes a little
broth very relishing, and is, indeed, the only savory thing poor people
are used to get.
She had also a small orchard, containing about a dozen apple-trees,
with which, in a good year, she has been known to make a couple of
barrels of cider, which she sold to her landlord towards paying her rent,
besides having a little keg which she was able to keep back for her own
drinking.
Well,