A SPORTSMAN'S CHRISTMAS 



CHRISTMAS is a period of junketings, feasting, 

 and frolic. It is an epoch of hospitality and 

 geniality. To the hunting man Christmas is 

 usually accompanied by a weak seat, a bleary 

 eye, and a particular thirst for jumping 

 powder ; wine, however, unfortunately does 

 not high authority, notwithstanding always 

 make men of a cheerful countenance. To 

 the shooting man the festive season means 

 an unsteady hand and a whimsical eye, the 

 result of which is that a beater's vocation is, 

 for the nonce, a somewhat precarious one ; in 

 point of fact, like Offenbach's Gendarme, 



" his lot is not a happy one," and not 

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