OVER ONCE upon a time poor humanity had to learn both its business and its pleasures by dint of sad experience, only discovering in old age how much time it had wasted by going round two sides of the triangle, instead of across the base. But now happy mortals have only to turn to their book - shelves, and there they will find the royal roads all mapped, described, and measured with an accuracy that should surely make failure impossible. With what are, rightly or wrongly, held to be the more serious of these walks of life, this paper will not deal; they are in a thousand safer pairs of hands. I sing but of firearms and the man; of that wide field of sport covered by the heading "Shooting"; that ancient business which doubtless began with a smooth stone and a slumbering quarry, and has now arrived at the incubated rocketer. On ten thousand shelves (more or less) there stands a small library of shooting books, all brought up to the latest date upon the calendar. Take one down and turn over its illustrated pages. Even in half an hour the variety of useful information you will acquire is astounding. You will learn exactly where you would have stood supposing you had been number 5 gun in Lord X's big day two years ago. You will learn how, by placing them carefully upon one another's heads, eight thousand pheasants can be stowed away in an acre DOGS. of artificial timber; and how, with the aid of fifty beaters and a careful attention to directions, they can be reduced to decimal something or - other within ten delirious minutes. You will further be informed how butts should be constructed, how your motor-car can be employed to convey you to the first hedge and meet you at the last, together with a number of other particulars equally entertaining and instructive. The greater part of these volumes are so taken up with such information, and it is given with so much particularity, that a mandarin of Yung-Ho, into whose hands a copy may be imagined to pass, would naturally suppose that the wants of every sportsman in Great Britain were more than adequately met. Is this, indeed, the literature of all of us who love the feel of a cold barrel, the whistle of the wind over the muzzle, the aroma of powder when we open the breech, the whirr of startled wings, the silence of the covertside in November, the springy cushions of heather,—all the stirring circumstances of our sport? What of the man in the snipe-bogs of Ireland, the man in the Outer Islands, the man in the rice-fields of India, the hunter of game wherever he is? In many an English county it is still the longest legs that get the most partridges: out of many a spinney two men and a terrier could drive all the pheasants that ever sheltered there. To the energetic army who invade such barren lands, how do all the diagrams of his lordship's big day apply? There be even some gentlemen whose pair of guns grow hot at the breech six times a-week, who yet trust themselves so implicitly in their host's hands that the streaming pheasants might be issuing from a meatsafe for all they know of the day's arrangements. It is actually whispered that some hosts exist who could afford their guests uncommonly little information on the subject. One is almost inclined to ask whether the handsome volume in the mandarin's hands is not in truth 'The Epic of Keepering.' We, the vast army who wade the marshes and lift our miry feet drill by drill across the roots, would feel no whit aggrieved by such scant notice of our beloved amusement were that all we suffered from these text-books. But hear this latest Justice Foxley pronouncing verdict on our case: five reasons he gives why men prefer to shoot their grouse by other means than driving, and then weighs down the scales with contrary arguments. Will it be believed that in the five there is no mention of that which constitutes the very essence of the sport of walking after birds-the quality, I mean, of chase, the seeking, finding, and slaying a wild and wary foe? Therein lies the point of the whole play; the plot, climax, moral, and all. Are we, then, to be accused of merely desiring easier shots, and asked to study two hundred pages of instruction how we may best drive our own or (more generally) our host's moors? The pride of the bogtrotting, turnip-tramping host is touched to the quick by these insinuations and this patronage. No, Mr Justice! we admit the glories of a Norfolk hedge or a Yorkshire butt, and accept an invitation if we get one, and stand on tenterhooks of thrill waiting for birds from somewhere to be sent by some one. It is magnificent, we allow, exciting beyond words, and the skill required diabolical. But then, your worship, watching a runaway cab is equally exciting, and balancing a chair on the nose requires at least as much skill, so that too much must not be made of these arguments. Look now at the other side: suppose we accompany my friends Lieutenant Stock and Mr Chambers through a September day, and see whether some surprisingly good fun is not to be had by their simple methods. And whatever you think of these, you will at least make the acquaintance of as keen a pair of sportsmen as is to be found between Shetland and Penzance. It is late in the month; the day sunny and windy; the scene a moorland place six hundred miles and more from Charing Cross. As for the time, it is about the hour of ten when the Lieutenant and his guest, followed by a broad red-bearded man who answers to the name of John, and by two delighted Gordon setters, start upwards through the fields. So far north lies this land that the reapers have only just fallen to work upon the oats, and you may still see golden ripples sweeping over the fields between the ordered ranks of stooks. The arms of the reaping - machines whirr with a genial noise; the air is crisp as a biscuit; everything cheers these worthies on their way, till they cross the empty highway, and with the ditch on the farther side the works of man cease and the broad moors open. It is very evident that business is about to begin. Lieutenant Stock (late R.N.) makes this abundantly clear by removing his neck-stud and rolling his flannel collar still further open, observing at the same time that it is " going to be devilish warm.' Whatever the temperature, he invariably prefaces his operations with the same remark; for although a mass of muscle, he is one of those unfortunates foredoomed to fatness as soon as he shall cease to exercise. At present he is as tough a customer as you could wish to meet, with a nut - brown face, hair just beginning to get grizzled, straight back, and iron lumps of calves. Since he relinquished his profession he has turned farmer, stockbreeder, and gamekeeper on his small estate, and salt and soil are now mingled in his metaphors. The first two of these departments would infallibly have ruined him ere now (for he is equally ignorant and positive on both subjects) were it not for the extreme simplicity of his tastes and frugality of his life. As for his skill as keeper, you should see him burning his own heather and training his own dogs! He began both from a book, but has already adopted entirely novel principles of his own, of which this at least can be said that they keep him in excellent condition. Chambers is the most complete contrast to his friend imaginable. Gigantically tall, powerfully formed, and lean as a greyhound, he looks as though he could walk all day without turning a hair-as in truth he can. A warlike black moustache gives a formidable expression to his countenance, and this effect is heightened by the preparations for slaughter he is making. He tightens the belt of his coat, turns up the cuffs of the sleeves, and finally completes the process by reversing his cap, so that the peak points down his neck somewhat after the manner of a sou'-wester. "Haud up, Rum!" shouts Stock in his brusquest quarterdeck accent, and away goes number one dog-a short, keen, curly fellow, whose anxiety to open the ball has been taking the form of the most touching demonstrations of affection. He does not wait now to say thanks, but with headlong vehemence hurls himself at the hillside, and is a couple of hundred yards away in a twinkling. Cutter, the other setter, strains for an excited instant at his leash, and then, with a mournful look in his brown eyes, falls resignedly to heel. "One dog on deck at a time," is always the Lieutenant's principle; and as his kennel consists solely of these two, it is unquestionably a prudent pro- over the brow and out of vision. with the cool And now, breeze in their faces, the advance begins, Stock walking with an upright and determined mien, and Chambers striding like the famous owner of the seven-league boots. From side to side ranges the energetic Rum, searching the ground on certain excellent but mysterious principles. Some patches of heather he apparently knows will be barren, while to others he devotes prolonged and careful investigation. Stock's eye is always on him, but his glance is keenest when he is deviating farthest from what ought to be his regular beat, and suddenly on one of these occasions he gives a low whistle and a quick look towards Chambers. No need to call his friend's attention, Chambers too has spied the sudden halt and stiffening of little Rum, and off they stalk towards his cataleptic tail. Stock comes to his side with Chambers on the other flank, and scarcely are they up to him when Rum is off at a pace that keeps them moving as fast as they can stride. They have covered some fifty yards in this fashion when, with a derisive "Kukkuk!" an old cock leaps from the heather and is off far out of shot. "Steady, ye brute!" mutters Stock as Rum shows a desire to rush in and have first sniff at the end of the trail. "There may be more, you idiot!" But this precaution is of no avail, for a moment later a lady grouse arises sixty yards away and follows her lord sight. "I'm afraid they are going to be deuced wild," says Stock, wiping his brow with a large coloured handkerchief. Chambers wastes few words on these occasions, but he shakes out his long arms as though loosening himself in preparation for some desperate deed that shall retrieve the fortunes of the day; and on they go again. A little later Rum sets again; but this time, without tantalising them further, a small covey of four are up and away almost as soon as they have begun to turn their steps towards him. "I tell you what," says Stook, "we must put on full steam ahead and get in front of the beggars next time. This kind o' nonsense won't do." This artful intention they proceed to carry out on the next occasion when their scout gives them notice of birds in the wind. One on the right and the other on the left, they each make a wide circuit, and at last stealthily approach the rigid Rum, Nearer and nearer they come till they are at his very nose, and still nothing gets up. "Seek! seek!" whispers Stock hoarsely, and turning cautiously down wind Rum proceeds to carry out this order. Little need for prolonged search however; forty yards down the hill they have just climbed, the wily cockgrouse, who has been doubling back as they have been hurrying forward, gets up with a cackle, almost knocking the red-bearded John over in his haste to escape. Down goes John on his face, but too late for a shot; and thus have these skilful engineers again been hoist. printed narrative of sport, but his originality has anything but a soothing effect upon the principal actor. Indeed he is still swearing under his breath, and declaring aloud that he has never missed a snipe before so shockingly (which is entirely untrue, as, like another mariner, he never stoppeth above one in three), when a whistle from Chambers arouses him from these gloomy reflections. There is no doubt about it, These last operations have been of so arduous a nature that the gallant Lieutenant deems it advisable to pause for a few minutes and direct his friend's attention to the beauties of nature. They have come by this time far up the long slope that joins the white clouds to the blue autumn sea. Green and brown islands, golden-Rum is pointing as unmisfields, deep - green patches of turnip, bronzed heather, clouds, sunshine, and keen air, did one ever look upon a fairer prospect? The Lieutenant forgets his chagrin as he gazes, and beams with the joy of being alive on such a morning; while the more stolid Chambers lights a cigarette and draws his belt still tighter. Once more they are off, and this time a change of plan is adopted, for Stock piques himself on his strategy, and is for ever devising new methods of warfare against the fowls of the air and the heather. He turns now across the wind, and endeavours so far as possible to keep his dog working to leeward of their line of march. That is the first movement in a masterly scheme which he has just been thinking out; but before there is time to carry it any further an annoying incident occurs. This consists in the unexpected and startling springing of a snipe from under his very feet, and his ignominiously missing it with both barrels. It is the first time, so far as I am aware, that such an incident has occurred in any takably as the hand of a clock, |