On Gun Accidents. 375 



three lucifer matches in the flask loose among the powder. How 

 they got there, not one of us could form the least idea j but there 

 they were, for I saw them taken out myself, and I shall never 

 forget the sang-froid with which the man coolly lighted one of the 

 matches at his short pipe right over the open powder-flask, just to 

 see if it " would go ;" and having ascertained this important fact, 

 he tersely remarked : " Ah, that shows my time is not come yet." 



Any one who reads the foregoing chapter of accidents will, I 

 expect, think that I have either grossly exaggerated, or else have 

 certainly seen much more than other men j but neither of these is 

 the case. I could mention a score more narrow escapes if I wished, 

 which had happened either to myself or to other men in my 

 presence ; and I have no doubt that if any one of my readers, who, 

 like myself, has shot hard for thirty years, were to reckon up all 

 the accidents he had witnessed or narrowly escaped, it would be 

 seen that others have had quite as many narrow escapes as myself 

 with guns. 



I will merely add that this chapter of hair-breadth escapes is not 

 intended as a sensation article. I have not exaggerated a single 

 fact, nor is a single statement contained in this narration untrue. 

 I wrote it merely to put young sportsmen on their guard, and to 

 prove how easily an accident may happen from a gun, be the cause 

 carelessness or what it may. 



A gun now-a-days is in the hands of as many men and boys as 

 an umbrella or a walking-stick, and in nine cases out of ten is 

 handled and tossed about in quite as careless a manner. 



When this letter first appeared in the columns of The Field, 

 one correspondent informed us that he had read it with astonish- 

 ment, and probably both might also have added, with incredulity j 

 another, with amusement j but both joined issue on one point, that 

 the escapes and accidents therein described were the results of 

 " gross and unpardonable negligence." I was seriously thinking of 

 confessing myself to the readers of The Field as a man in whose 

 hands a gun could hardly be safely trusted, but luckily just before I 

 went to confessional, I received a letter from a very old friend of 



