RURAL SPORTS 



at least, may be easy and soft. Witness all this with your own 

 eyes ; and then go weeping to bed, at the possibility of a hare 

 having been terribly frightened without being killed, or of a bird 

 having been left in a thicket with a shot in its body or a fracture in 

 its wing. But, before you go up stairs, give your servant orders 

 to be early at market for fish, fresh out of the water ; that they 

 may be scaled, or skinned alive ! A truce with you, then, senti 

 mental eaters of flesh : and here I propose the terms of a lasting 

 compromise with you. We must, on each side, yield something : 

 we sportsmen will content ourselves with merely seeing the hares 

 skip and the birds fly : and you shall be content with the flesh and 

 fish that come from cases of natural death, of which, I am sure, 

 your compassionate disposition will not refuse us a trifling 

 allowance. 



372. Nor have even the Pythagoreans a much better battery 

 against us. Sir RICHARD PHILLIPS, who once rang a peal in my 

 ears against shooting and hunting, does, indeed, eat neither flesh, 

 fish, nor fowl. His abstinence surpasses that of a Carmelite, 

 while his bulk would not disgrace a Benedictine Monk, or a 

 Protestant Dean. But, he forgets, that his shoes and breeches 

 and gloves are made of the skins of animals : he forgets that he 

 writes (and very eloquently too) wdth what has been cruelly taken 

 from a fowl ; and that, in order to cover the books which he has 

 had made and sold, hundreds of flocks and scores of droves must 

 have perished : nay, that, to get him his beaver-hat, a beaver must 

 have been hunted and killed, and, in the doing of which, many 

 beavers may have been wounded and left to pine away the rest of 

 their lives ; and, perhaps, many little orphan beavers, left to lament 

 the murder of their parents. BEN LEY was the only real and 

 sincere Pythagorean of modern times, that I ever heard of. He 

 protested, not only against eating the flesh of animals, but also 

 against robbing their backs ; and, therefore, his dress consisted 

 wholly of flax. But, even he, like Sir Richard Phillips, eat milk, 

 butter, cheese, and eggs ; though this was cruelly robbing the 

 hens, cows, and calves ; and, indeed causing the murder of the 

 calves. In addition, poor little BEN forgot the materials of book 

 binding : and, it was well he did ; for else, his Bible would have 

 gone into the fire ! 



373. Taking it for granted, then, that sportsmen are as good 

 as other folks on the score of humanity, the sports of the field, like 

 every thing else done in the fields, tend to produce, or preserve 

 health. I prefer them to all other pastime, because they produce 

 early rising : because they have no tendency to lead young men 

 into vicious habits. It is where men congregate that the vices 

 haunt. A hunter or a shooter may also be a gambler and a 

 drinker ; but, he is less likely to be fond of the two latter, if he be 

 fond of the former. Boys will take to something in the way of 

 pastime ; and, it is better that they take to that which is innocent, 

 healthy, and manly, than that which is vicious, unhealthy, and 



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