68 My Pond. 



serio-comic touch sketches the sportsman of the con- 

 trary type, in his education and his tendencies. 



" We will now, after the manner of great moralists, 

 such as he who depicted the careers of the Industrious 

 and Idle Apprentices, give the reverse of the picture, 

 in the horrible imp of empty head and stony heart, 

 who has been trained to regard the creatures around 

 him as the mere ministers of his pleasure and his pride, 

 and who, in fact, represents in its worst form the in- 

 different or cruel state of feeling towards animals. 

 Provided almost in his cradle by his unnatural parents 

 with puppies and kittens whereon to wreak his evil 

 propensities, he treats them, to the best of his ability, 

 as the infant Hercules treated the serpents, and when 

 provoked to retaliate with tooth and claw, they are 

 ordered, with his full concurrence, to immediate execu- 

 tion. A little later he hails the periodical pregnancies 

 of the ill-used family as so many opportunities in store 

 for drowning the progeny. All defenceless animals 

 falling into his power are subject to martyrdom by 

 lapidation. Show him a shy bird of rare beauty on 

 moor or heath, in wood or valley, and the soulless 

 goblin immediately shies a stone at it. Stray tabbies 

 are the certain victims of his bull-terrier, and the terrier 

 itself, when it refuses to sit up and smoke a pipe, or to 

 go into the river after a water-rat, is beaten and kicked 

 without mercy. He goes with a relish to see the 

 keeper shoot old Ponto, who was whelped ten years 

 ago in the kennel, and comes in to give his sisters 

 (who don't care) appreciative details of the execution. 

 As a sportsman, he is a tyrant to his dogs, a butcher 

 to his horse ; and sitting on that blown and drooping 

 steed, he looks with a disgusting satisfaction when the 

 fox is broken up. Throughout life he regards all his 



