MY FIRST BOAT RIDE 

 A\y boyish heart swelled with pride. Ay great- 

 est desire had been gratified. I found I had ac- 

 quired the *'knack" and from that time on I be- 

 came a "wing shot." I was the only boy in the 

 neighborhood that could shoot "flying." I was 

 greatly envied by my boy chums. /Aany of 

 them were much older than I. so much so that 

 one day I overheard one of our neighbors say to 

 his wife, "Werich will ruin that boy by letting him 

 run around totting a gun all the time. They'd a 

 darn sight better keep him at work doing some- 

 thing worth while." A few years later when 

 breech loaders became more plentiful Father 

 bought one and gave me the old muzzle loader, 

 or rather I traded him an old watch for it. The 

 gun and I became inseperable and 1 would keep 

 it in the parlor if my wife would have permitted 

 it. I thought so much of that old gun that in 

 1884 I carried it across the Western Plains to 

 the foothills of the Rockies for the purpose of 

 shooting wild game, as it was the best gun to 

 throw coarse shot that I ever saw. For double 



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