4 A BOOK ABOUT TEE GABDEN. 



energy ; and then the crisis, the awful ecstasy, when 

 the rifle is raised, and the stricken deer takes his last 

 wild leap, and falls with a crash to die. Think, too, of 

 quiet, pleasant days with genial friends in bright 

 sunny September ; of truthful ' Don,' stanch upon his 

 point, and ' Belle ' backing him, sixty yards off ; of 

 the panniered pony with the welcome lunch, and the 

 laughing girls who spread it for us beneath the brave 

 old oak. Eecall those frosty mornings in December, 

 quickening the blood and sharpening the wits, and the 

 cheery congress of shooters, keepers, beaters, and 

 retrievers, forming into line along the grassy ' riding.' 

 Listen again to the nimble sticks, clattering amid the 

 trees, gaily as the shillelaghs in an Irish row, and 

 ever and anon beating a wild tattoo, with an accom- 

 paniment of yells, hardly to be surpassed by betting- 

 men, or any other lunatics, and called forth by an 

 ambition, ever fruitless, to 'stop that rabbit back.' 

 Hearken once more, for there is a cry of still intenser 

 interest : a voice as full of deep emotion as if the 

 owner had roused a buffalo, or flushed his uncle's 

 ghost, is heard to shriek, ' Mark woodcock ! and we 

 bring him down, as he glides into the open, to the 

 immense disgust of Smith, outside the covert, who has 

 just raised his gun to fire. Think, finally, of wild 

 ducks, quacking out of sedgy streams, and of glad 

 retrievers springing from the bank, and shaking the 

 water from their glossy curls, as they lay the mallard 

 at your feet ! " 



And I said, " Oh, Knickerbockers, thy words are 

 true, but they tell not all the truth. Thou hast been 

 reticent with reference to mournful hours, when the 



