2 A Book of the Snipe. 



the streets. Peace of soul has evidently not 

 kept pace with solicitude for the body, and the 

 loud laugh which speaks the vacant mind is 

 so rarely heard that some of us are beginning 

 to realise mournfully how jolly a sound it was. 



Sport — by which I mean the chase of flesh 

 or fowl, or even of good red-herring in the 

 shape of a ''drag," — sport is the best yeast 

 of life, the most certain specific to keep our 

 bodies from becoming doughy and our spirits 

 dumpish. No other form of amusement 

 possesses quite the same power of taking a 

 man out of that most undesirable groove, 

 himself It is the best business for the idler, 

 the finest idling for the busy. How many 

 of the former has it not saved from perdition, 

 and to what multitudes in the grip of a plague 

 of thinking has its very thoughtlessness not 

 proved the only medicine '^ 



A man who does actually nothing all his 

 days but hunt or shoot or fish, though he 

 may be very properly despised, can yet be 

 no bad kind of drone, for his very loafing 

 has in it something of the nobility of dis- 



