MEDITATIONS ON A BROOMSTICK. 
171 
and universality, let us take this crippled stump, worn 
as it is to a mere shadow in the service of that which is 
next to godliness. It was once a comety, upright, lusty 
broom, with a stout birchen body, and a green bushy 
head; and though ever standing with its one leg in the 
air, yet always ready to be useful, and run the risk of 
apoplexy for the service of a good cause. Its wretched 
stump, now reduced to the last extremity of vegetable 
suffering, was, in time gone by, a waving branch of 
lady-birch, and was clothed in silver bark, and tasselled 
over with delicate twigs and little fairy leaves. When 
spring came, it danced to and fro in the sunlight, and 
its shadow glided up and down the white ledges of the 
rocks, over which its pensile sprays peeped to see the 
water trickle down the ravine. Glorious was the lady- 
birch at any season; glorious, too, the hale green broom; 
the one gleaming in the morning sun, where the wood- 
pigeon built her nest, the other dressing the stony moor 
with yellow livery, and both living to make the world 
more beautiful. It is this birch‘d which supplies the 
best of wood for broomsticks, and whose young feathery 
branches often take the place of the green broom in the 
completion of the besom. In the Highlands they use it 
for tanning, for dyeing wool yellowits bark supplies 
Highland candles and Norway bread; its wood, charcoal 
and printers - ’ ink; its leaves, fodder for horses, kine, 
sheep, and goats; and its seed, food for that pretty 
* Birch —Celt., betu; A. S. hire; Dutch, berke; German 
berkan , birchenbaum ; Fr., bouteau ; Ital. betulla . Pliny, I. 16, c. 
18 speaks of the mirabilis candor of the birch. “It showeth 
wonderful white,” says Holland. 
