QUAIL SHOOTING 305 



lieve, are reckoned among the world's necessary evils, 

 making their living out of the miseries of other peo- 

 ple by rasping their grinders, filling their mouths with 

 rubber dams — and possibly damns of another sort — 

 and boring into the bowels of their molars. How- 

 ever, my friend had deserted this occupation for 

 awhile to indulge in the more congenial one of quail 

 shooting, and when we arrived we found him and his 

 dogs awaiting us. 



After taking a hasty dinner of boiled cabbage and 

 " fried things," we started for the fields ; and a little 

 later the battery of guns shook the air, while the whirr 

 of the swift-flying quail greeted our ears and started 

 our blood on a frisky gallop through its channels. 



Though the birds were there in abundance they 

 were as wild as Bob White knows how to be when he 

 is pointed at and shouted at and shot at by every man 

 in the country who can get hold of a gun. Down in 

 this region the whole of Christmas week, as well as the 

 remainder of the year, is Christmas, and everybody, 

 whether he is anybody, or not, takes a grand holiday 

 and starts on a hunt for rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, 

 quail, and the fat opossum. Never in all my " born 

 days " have I seen such an heterogeneous assortment of 

 guns. Guns tied with wire ; guns wrapped with leather 

 thongs and twine to keep them from falling apart ; 

 old muzzle-loaders whose rusty barrels were loaded 

 with peril for the man bold enough to fire them; 



