SMALL SHOT 211 



not worth, or inestimably more than worth, pow- 

 der and shot. Who has ever heard the last word 

 the jay has to tell him in her many voices? Who 

 has tired of visiting with the chickadees, or of 

 watching the nuthatches creeping headlong down 

 the mossy tree trunks, or the squirrels' saucy 

 tricks, or the ways of strange woods plants grow- 

 ing and blowing and seeding, and the odd freaks of 

 trees' growths, and no end of things that he would 

 never have heard or seen if it had not been for this 

 wooden and iron excuse that he lugs about with 

 him? Thanks be to its first inventor, in spite of all 

 the woeful mischief it has wrought. How many 

 happy days it has gone to the making of, from boy- 

 hood to old age, in the lives of those who love it. 

 What a comfort is the ownership of a good gun, 

 though one seldom shoots it. What a pleasure its 

 owner has in those seasons when it cannot be 

 otherwise used, in putting it in order for the days 

 fondly looked forward to — days when the woods 

 have put on their last and bravest attire of the 

 year — days when they have cast it off and all 

 the landscape is veiled in the gray haze of Lidian 

 summer, and days when all the fields and frozen 

 waters are white with the first snows and the wild 

 music of the hounds stirs the woods. 



When these days have come and gone and win- 

 ter winds are howling, who so much as he, born to 

 the love of field sports with small opportunity of 



