SHOOTING. 43 



I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot 

 throughout the whole season. One day when shoot- 

 ing at Woodhouse with Captain Owen, the eldest son, 

 and Major Hill, his cousin, afterwards Lord Berwick, 

 both of whom I liked very much, I thought myself 

 shamefully used, for every time after I had fired and 

 thought that I had killed a bird, one of the two acted 

 as if loading his gun, and cried out, " You must not 

 count that bird, for I fired at the same time," and the 

 gamekeeper, perceiving the joke, backed them up. 

 After some hours they told me the joke, but it was no 

 joke to me, for I had shot a large number of birds, 

 but did not know how many, and could not add them 

 to my list, which I used to do by making a knot in a 

 piece of string tied to a button-hole. This my wicked 

 friends had perceived. 



How I did enjoy shooting ! but I think that I must 

 have been half-consciously ashamed of my zeal, for I 

 tried to persuade myself that shooting was almost an 

 intellectual employment ; it required so much skill 

 to judge where to find most game and to hunt the 

 dogs well. 



One of my autumnal visits to Maer in 1827 was 

 memorable from meeting there Sir J. Mackintosh, 

 who was the best converser I ever listened to. I 

 heard afterwards with a glow of pride that he had 

 said, " There is something in that young man that 

 interests me/' This must have been chiefly due to 

 his perceiving that I listened with much interest to 

 everything which he said, for I was as ignorant as a 

 pig about his subjects of history, politics, and moral 



