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PREFACE 



THE love of the chase is deeply imbedded in man's nature. During 

 the untold centuries of his savage condition he followed it of necessity. 

 We now revert to our primitive employment for our pleasure and rec- 

 reation, pursuing with ardor, sports which often involve much bodily fatigue 

 and always require skill and training. An impulse, often irresistible it seems, 

 leads man away from civilization, from its artificial pleasures and its mechan- 

 ical life, to the forests, the fields, and the waters, where he may have that free- 

 dom and peace which civilization denies him. If this be not so, then why is 

 it that the man of affairs as well as the man of leisure feels again the joy of 

 his youth as he bids farewell to his office or his club, and seeks the solitudes 

 of the woods and the plains ? He will meet there some old familiar face in a 

 guide, or fellow-sportsman, and welcome it with the ardor of good-fellowship. 

 He will undergo all sorts of bodily discomforts, — coarse food and rough bed, 

 the wet and the cold, — and yet be happy, because for a little spell he is free; 

 in other words, he has, for the time, become a civilized savage. If, with gun 

 and ro'd, he goes into the recesses of the great woods, and lives there for 

 weeks or months, or mounts his horse and traverses the western plains and 

 mountain passes, relying on his rifle for his subsistence, he is made to realize 

 that there are many things to be learned outside of cities and away from his 

 usual occupations. He will find food for philosophy in the behavior of his 

 hunting companions ; he will see who is manly and unselfish, who endowed 

 with pluck and self-reliance; for three weeks' association with a friend 

 in the wilderness will reveal more of his real character than a dozen years' 

 with him amid the safe retreats and soothing comforts of civilized life. 

 11 learn how few are the real wants of a happy life in the midst of unciv- 

 ilized nature. His troubles, if he carried any with him, will vanish ; time will 

 seem of as little value to him as to the savage, and like all true sportsmen 

 and "honest anglers," he will return to his home with a calmed spirit and a 

 contented mind. 



