DUCK-SHOOTING. 253 
One day a party, including a number who were 
not members, had been snipe-shooting, and some 
of the latter indulged the habit of pushing on be- 
fore their neighbor to shoot any bird they may have 
seen alight, or had reason to believe was upon his 
beat. Afterwards Henry remarked, as a sort of so- 
liloquy, “‘ He was a poor man—did not have much 
education, and supposed he did not know; but he 
did not think it right for one sportsman to run in 
ahead of another in order to shoot a bird before 
him. Probably he was wrong; but that was the 
way he felt, and could not help it.” 
It was this curious individual who waked us the 
next morning at an hour before daylight, and enjoyed 
heartily the satisfaction of rousing us up at that un- 
seemly time. We were no way loth, however, and 
hastily swallowing our breakfasts and launching our 
boats, pushed out under cover of the darkness for 
our respective points. As yet the water and land 
were scarcely distinguishable, and localities could 
only be determined by intuition. Night was still 
brooding with outstretched wings on the earth; the 
sky seemed to be close overhead, and the clouds 
could not be distinguished from the open heavens. 
Slowly, however, the outlines of the horizon be- 
came apparent; then the heavy masses of lowering 
cloud that hung in the eastern sky, and left a nar- 
row, transparent strip of light between themselves 
and the horizon, came out in strong relief; the stars 
faded and turned dim; trees, bushes, and distant 
elevations—the minutie of the landscape—ap- 
