SHOOTING MALLARDS FROM A SCULL BOAT. 59 
- Too late! The leaden hail has cut them down merci- 
lessly. They are on the water. One of the flock misses 
its mate, forgets its cause of alarm, and quickly returns 
with wings curved down. A quick report, a dull splash, 
as the feathers idly drift with the wind, and he, too, is 
dead. A single green-winged teal darts past us. We 
hastily bring up our guns, laugh at each other, and 
take them down. Our thoughts are identical. Each 
feeling, that at the speed it was flying, the odds would 
be in favor of the duck beating the shot in an even race. 
On a high ridge we stop for dinner. We drag from 
out the covered bow an old four-quart tin bucket, 
dirty and smutty with the smoke of many fires. We 
suspend it from one forked green stick hanging on two 
others. The snapping fire soon fills the air with escap- 
ing aroma, and we eat, drink, and are happy. 
You chide me because I refuse your proffered cigar. 
As you light its mate and liesurely throw yourself down, 
on the soft leaf covered ground, tell me how you en- 
joy it, and what a solace it is to you. My moustache 
conceals a quiet smile that plays around my mouth, and 
my thoughts revert to a place, where, at noon and even- 
tide, on returning from my office, two little darlings 
watch for me at the window, and when the door is 
opened spring into my arms, twining their soft arms 
tenderly around my neck; the eldest saying, between 
resounding kisses, “ I love you, papa dear, and love to 
kiss you, ‘cause you don’t ’moke!”’ while the sweet 
blue eyes of the younger, look appealingly at me as she 
exclaims, ‘ And My loves papa too!” 
Thou art blessed with eyes of deepest blue, 
Compared with which, the sky assumes a paler hue; 
Thou art my angels, with thy flaxen hair, 
My pets, my darlings waiting for me there. 
