THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



vacation, fishing and shootiui;' being the princij^al amusements 

 of that period — at all events, with young men who, like Frank 

 llaby, come under the denomination of sportsmen. Relating 

 to the last-named diversion, one fact is worth mentioning : — 

 What is called flapper-shooting was amongst the sports entered 

 into with spirit b}^ our hero, and, what is very rarely the case, 

 it was not, in this instance, merely confined to young wild 

 ducks. The great lake in the park, at Amstead, was also 

 frequented by teals, which bred in one of its islands in the 

 summer, a fact very much doubted by naturalists, and certainly 

 of rare occurrence in the southern parts of England. With a 

 brace of well-broken retrievers, flapper-shooting, whether at 

 ducks or teal, is very good sport, and rendered valuable by its 

 being seasonable previously to the commencement of game- 

 shooting, to which it of course gives place. 



At partridge-shooting, Frank Raby was now become an 

 adept. In fact, there was but little difference, in the contribu- 

 tion to the bag, between himself and the elder Perren ; and as 

 for Jem, he bowed to the superiority of his young master, who, 

 he was heard to say, ' he believed would turn out a capital 

 sportsman, in spite of all that had been done to spoil him, by 

 sending him to Eton and Oxford.' And our hero, with a gun 

 in his hand, was a sportsman in the strict sense of that word, 

 and not merely what, in these times, is more reckoned upon, 

 namely, ' a dead sltot' ' The latter,' as Mr. Cobbett eloquently 

 expressed himself, in allusion to the admirers of the modern 

 battue system, 'never participates in that great delight which 

 all sensible men enjoy at beholding the beautiful action, the 

 docility, the zeal, the wonderful sagacity of the pointer and 

 the setter ' ; but tJieir merit consists in rarely missing a 

 pheasant which is found for them by men-beaters, and in 

 slaughtering as many head of game in a day, as a sportsman, 

 who takes pleasure in finding them, would be satisfied with in 

 a week. Pheasants, however, were not, at this period, plentiful 

 on the Amstead estate, but their rarity increased their value. 

 There were, in those days, no 'sky-rockets of pheasants,' as in 

 the technical language of these, when a cloud of them rises 

 in a corner of a cover into which thej' have been driven, and 

 three or four fall at a shot. 



We will now exhibit our hero at the county races, it being 

 his first appearance on a race-course since he had visited 



149 



