A DAY WITH THE RAILS 



By ALFRED M. MAYER. 



SOON after the Christmas holidays, sport with dog and gun 

 ceases, and has become a matter for reveries before the evening 

 fire, where scene after scene comes and goes with the involun- 

 tary action of the mind, as it recalls those happy days of sport with 

 congenial and manly friends. What a refreshment the mind thus 

 takes to itself! What a respite are these reveries from the weariness 

 of routine and the emptiness and heartlessness of conventional life ! 

 The pleasures of the sportsman do not end with his sport, no more 

 than the murmurs of the rivulet we heard last summer in the depths 

 of the forests cease to soothe us bec'ause now silenced in the death 

 of winter. 



With the cool evenings of September the sportsman is reminded 

 of the approaching fall, and bethinks himself of what he can do to sat- 

 isfy his longing for his favorite pastime. He recollects that now the 

 wild oats are turning yellow and their ripened heads are waving 

 over the marshes and borders of our tidal rivers. Here the Soras, 

 or Carolina rails, are fattening into delicious morsels. It is true the 

 sport is tame compared with shooting bob white or woodcock over 

 " Billy's " sure and steady point ; but the gun has not been hand- 

 led for eight months, and our friend thinks the practice will be an 

 easy introduction to his November shooting ; and then his boy, who 

 can already hold his gun pretty well on clay pigeons, wishes to try 

 his Christmas gift on real birds, and what can be better for his first 

 lesson in wing-shooting than a day with the rails among the high, 

 waving water-oats? He will surely bring many birds to bag, and 

 he will ever remember in after-life the pride and pleasure he had 



