214 SMALL SHOT 



runway, and you remember how your heart tum- 

 bled at the time, and it aches and burns yet with 

 the fall it got, and the recollection of lost oppor- 

 tunity. 



For use the old gun is as good as it was then — 

 though its owner is not, and as for looks, he has 

 none the better of it. Maybe there were those who 

 used it before him, old hunters of the by-gone days 

 when caplocks first came in and game was plenty; 

 over whose tough old bones the grass has grown 

 and withered, and the snow lain for many a year, 

 and who are now remembered more by the guns 

 they carried than by their gravestones. For the 

 sights their now faded eyes beheld, for a chance at 

 the game their guns brought down, what would one 

 not give? The old gun is a link that holds one to 

 the past. Let us not despise it, though it is of a 

 fashion of other days — though it is rusted and 

 battered and its maker's name worn off and for- 

 gotten, it has that in it more enduring than iron, 

 that which no new gun can have, no matter how 

 handsome or good. 



III. THE SORROWS OF SPORTSMEN 

 Even so happy a man as he who disports himself 

 with rod and gun has his sorrows, as has the less 

 favored mortal whose pleasure lies in walks out- 

 side of quiet woods and afar from pleasant waters. 

 Of the sportsman's vexations may be mentioned 



