Getting Acquainted 255 



were both looking on the same thing a string of 

 dead birds. I grant them their point of view, 

 but honestly, had the string been Irish potatoes 

 instead of Quail that they as kitchen police in a 

 Cantonment, during the world war, had prepared 

 for use, by the process called peeling, I would 

 have thought it much more worthy of congratula- 

 tion. 



Somewhere, I have seen a picture of a mighty 

 hunter, with a wide, wide smile on his refined face, 

 and Duck, and Ducks, and Ducks, and more 

 Ducks festooning, smothering his manly form. 

 Of course it was in a saloon, where only moder- 

 ate drinking is indulged in, and the joyous com- 

 pany is celebrating the grand victory of one of 

 their own number. It was almost like the ovation 

 we give to returning soldiers who have been mak- 

 ing the world safe for democracy. I do not see 

 this aggregation of dead things as ducks, but as 

 individual ducks, each with an unknown individu- 

 ality and personality, with somewhat rudimentary 

 traits and faculties in the main, but with other 

 traits far surpassing human reason, or human sen- 

 timent. They are nearly all Mallards and I knew 

 a certain Green-headed Mallard who opened the 

 door into the secret archives of his race. Else- 

 where in this volume I have told of "Mally's" 

 mating with a single white Pekin Duck, and it 

 will be easy for these fine gentlemen to under- 



