From: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24937/24937.txt
But the meanest thing that I ever heard of his doing, was this: In these same woods--the woods where the huckleberries and hazel nuts grew--there were great multitudes of birch trees, of different species and among the rest, some of that species which goes by the name, among children, of _black birch_. I need not tell any of my country readers about this kind of birch. They know it well enough. They have eaten birch bark, many a time; and, for ought I know, some of them have felt a tingling sensation in the region of the back and legs, brought about by the use of birch twigs in the hands of some schoolmaster.
The boys, I have heard, bore him a grudge of long standing. It related to the huckleberries and hazel nuts in the old man's birch woods. There were bushels of huckleberries, and almost as many hazel nuts, in those woods. But would you have thought of such a thing? Mr. Birch forbade the boys picking any of his huckleberries or hazel nuts. Ever so many huckleberries decayed on the bushes every year, or were left to be harvested by the birds, because Mr. Birch's family could not pick them all themselves, and he was so tight that he would not let any body else pick them. He was like the dog in the manger, you see. He could not eat the hay himself, and he would not let any body else eat it.
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