SMALL SHOT 219 



If there were no hounding of deer, the world 

 might come to an end before he could boast of 

 killing one, he, meanwhile, eating his own heart 

 with bitter sauce of envy, beholding the skillful 

 hunter kill his stag often by fair and sportsman- 

 like methods. What is it to him that there should 

 be no deer in all the woods twenty years hence, 

 so that he to-day clubs to death one suckling 

 doe? 



Nor is this so-called sportsman the only goose- 

 killer whose wrongdoing makes us all suffer. For 

 his and the milliners' profit and the barbarous 

 ornamentation of women's head-dress, another 

 ruthlessly slays the harmless and useful beautiful 

 birds, to the world's loss of song and beauty and 

 goodness. The farmer and the lumberman strip 

 mountain and swamp of forest growth for a little 

 present gain and the world's irreparable loss, the 

 loss of copious springs and streams, and loss by 

 disastrous floods. A few greedy speculators com- 

 bine to spoil the nation's park for their own selfish 

 gain, shameless, unscrupulous; and the nation 

 looks on almost unconcerned, with but here and 

 there a voice lifted in condemnation of the out- 

 rageous scheme of destruction. 



So the ceaseless warfare against nature goes 

 on, till one is almost ready to despair that the race 

 of goose-killers shall be removed from the face of 

 the earth till the last goose that lays an egg of 



