1 86 In the United States vi 



having forgotten to fire some three inches under 

 the brisket of that big black-tail who stood so 

 quietly below you there in canon, and having got 

 by your folly only a lock of hair from the point of 

 his shoulder and nothing more — ah ! that reminds 

 me of the poet : — 



' Only a lock of woman's hair ! 



The maiden said ; 

 So she hung it over the back of a chair, 

 And went to bed.' 



Sweet ! sweet ! and true, too — at least I am told so 

 by experts — which all poetry is not ; no, sir ! But to 

 return to our prairie chickens out West — which I 

 wish with all my heart that I could. Coming back, 

 as I have said, with the certainty at last fully realised 

 that the whole of creation is one blank mistake, and 

 that the mastery of the brute creation given to Adam 

 has not been transmitted to his descendants, you 

 just take a " smile " of the real, old, blue-grass 

 Bourbon. Gracious ! who's pulled up the blinds ? 

 How bright everything is ! It was not my fault 

 that I missed the buck ; no, nor the rifle's either, 

 poor dear ; it was that powder, of course it was ; 

 and, after all, there'll be meat in camp, and I hate 

 mere butchery — those horns were not bad though. 



' Come, let us saunter out, and sit under the 

 cedars. As we sit we become aware of the existence 

 of a pleasant noise besides the whisperings of the 

 wind in the branches, a chirruping and a twittering 

 and a croodling-sort-of-a-gossiping which causes us 



