FOR YOUNG SHOOTERS 41 



of the thing. Don't bind yourself to such a story 

 as being part of your own personal experience. 

 Work it in on another man's back. Of course 

 there are exceptions even to this rule. But this 

 question I shall be able to treat at greater length 

 when I come to deal with the important subject of 

 ' Shooting Anecdotes.' 



Very often you can work up quite a nice little 

 conversation on cigarettes. Every man believes, 

 as is well known, that he possesses the only decent 

 cigarettes in the country. He either (1) imports 

 them himself from Cairo, or (2). he gets his tobacco 

 straight from a firm of growers somewhere in Syria 

 and makes it into cigarettes himself; or (3) he 

 thinks Egyptian cigarettes are an abomination, 

 and only smokes Eussians or Americans ; or (4) he 

 knows a man, Backastopoulo by name, somewhere 

 in the Batcliffe Highway, who has the very- best 

 cigarettes you ever tasted. You wouldn't give two- 

 pence a hundred for any others after smoking 

 these, he tells you. And, lastly, there is the man 

 who loathes cigarettes, despises those who smoke 

 them, and never smokes anything himself except 

 a special kind of cigar ornamented with a sort of 

 red and gold garter, 



