86 DYER’S HOLLOW. 
have regretted their work; but I should have 
thought no ill of them. Their vocation 
would have been as honorable, for aught I 
know, as that of any other butcher. Buta 
man of twenty, a man of seventy, shooting 
sanderlings, ring plovers, golden plovers, 
and whatever else comes in his way, not for 
money, nor primarily for food, but because 
he enjoys the work! “A little lower than 
the angels!’?> What numbers of innocent 
and beautiful creatures have I seen limping 
painfully along the beach, after the gunners 
had finished their day’s amusement! Even 
now I think with pity of one particular 
turnstone. Some being made “a little 
lower than the angels” had fired at him and 
carried away one of his legs. I watched 
him for anhour. Much of the time he stood 
motionless. Then he hobbled from one 
patch of eel-grass to another, in search of 
something to eat. My heart ached for him, 
and it burns now to think that good men 
find it a pastime to break birds’ legs and 
wings and leave them to perish. I have 
seen an old man, almost ready for the grave, 
who could amuse his last days in this way 
for weeks together. An exhilarating and 
