142 WINTER SUNSHINE 



home about the fields and even in the towns. I v/as 

 glad also to see that the British crow was not a 

 stranger to me, and that he differed from his bro- 

 ther on the American side of the Atlantic only in 

 being less alert and cautious, having less use for 

 these qualities. 



Now and then the train would start up some more 

 tempting game. A brace or two of partridges or a 

 covey of quails would settle down in the stubble, or 

 a cock pheasant drop head and tail and slide into 

 the copse. Eabbits also would scamper back from 

 the borders of the fields into the thickets or peep 

 slyly out, making my sportsman's fingers tingle. 



I have no doubt I should be a notorious poacher 

 in England. How could an American see so much 

 game and not wish to exterminate it entirely as he 

 does at home ? But sporting is an expensive luxury 

 here. In the first place a man pays a heavy tax on 

 his gun, nearly or quite half its value; then he has 

 to have a license to hunt, for which he pays smartly ; 

 then permission from the owner of the land upon 

 which he wishes to hunt, so that the game is hedged 

 about by a triple safeguard. 



An American, also, will be at once struck with 

 the look of greater substantiality and completeness 

 in everything he sees here. No temporizing, no 

 makeshifts, no evidence of hurry, or failure, or 

 contract work ; no wood and little paint, but plenty 

 of iron and brick and stone. This people have 

 taken plenty of time, and have built broad and 

 deep, and placed the cap-stone on. All this I had 



