56 THE OUT-STATION; OK, 



son to the monster against whom, single-handed, he 

 enters the arena. 



It is not the mere ordinary pleasure that one ex- 

 periences in sport generally, such as running into a 

 fox after a forty minutes' chase (and there are few 

 excitements more enlivening or heart-thrilling than 

 that), or the self-satisfied complacency that one feels 

 on the eve of a first of September, when the spacious 

 pockets are relieved of some thirty brace of birds; 

 but it must be the consciousness of the power of man 

 over every beast of the field, and the pride of wield- 

 ing it, that causes one to feel such intense gratifi- 

 cation when an elephant is brought down in the midst 

 of its own native wilds ! 



To such perfection has elephant shooting been 

 carried in Ceylon, that I fear every reader who had 

 never visited those shores would consider the " Jaunts" 

 far too " Munchausenish" if I related every anecdote 

 connected with the slaughter of the elephant that has 

 fallen under my own immediate observation in 

 short, it is much better to keep all matters of wonder- 

 ment to oneself rather than lose irretrievably a repu- 

 tation for truth by being the unlucky possessor of the 

 knowledge of some extraordinary feat that could only 

 produce incredulity in ninety and nine readers out of 

 every hundred; in illustration of which I will relate 

 an anecdote that actually occurred at a well-known 

 club-house in London not very many years ago, where 

 foreign sports becoming the topic of conversation 



