364 DUCK SHOOTING. 



wings. As I wheeled at these last mallards, after mak- 

 ing a half shift of the gun toward the bhie-wings, they 

 saw me, and turned suddenly upward, belaboring the 

 air with heavy strokes, and just as I turned the gun 

 upon them a mass of bluebills, with the sound like the 

 tearing of forty yards of strong muslin, came in be- 

 tween, and just behind me I heard the air throb be- 

 neath the wings of the mallards I had first intended to 

 shoot at. The gun wabbled from the second mallards 

 to the bluebills, and then around to the mallards behind 

 me — each chance looking more tempting than the last 

 — and finally went off in the vacancy just over my head 

 that the mallards had filled when I raised it. 



You who think you know all about duck shooting, if 

 you have never been in such a position, have something 

 yet to learn. Excitement and success you may enjoy 

 to the full, but while your ammunition lasts you know 

 nothing of the pleasures of contemplation. Amid the 

 shock, and jar, and smoke, the confusion of even load- 

 ing the quickest breech-loader, and retrieving the ducks 

 even with the best of dogs, you see nothing compared 

 to what you may see without a gun. As I dropped the 

 worthless gun upon a muskrat house, and sat down 

 upon top of it, the whole world where I had been liv- 

 ing vanished in a twinkling, and I found myself in 

 another sphere, filled with circling spirits, all endowed 

 with emotions, hopes and fears, like those that Dante 

 saw in Paradise. 



There, indeed, was the great sea of being, but all 

 one vast whirlpool that engulfed the soul of the poor 



