214 SMALL SHOT 



runway, and you remember how your heart tum- 

 bled at the time, and it aches and burns yet with 

 the fall it got, and the recollection of lost oppor- 

 tunity. 



For use the old gun is as good as it was then 

 though its owner is not, and as for looks, he has 

 none the better of it. Maybe there were those who 

 used it before him, old hunters of the by-gone days 

 when caplocks first came in and game was plenty; 

 over whose tough old bones the grass has grown 

 and withered, and the snow lain for many a year, 

 and who are now remembered more by the guns 

 they carried than by their gravestones. For the 

 sights their now faded eyes beheld, for a chance at 

 the game their guns brought down, what would one 

 not give? The old gun is a link that holds one to 

 the past. Let us not despise it, though it is of a 

 fashion of other days though it is rusted and 

 battered and its maker's name worn off and for- 

 gotten, it has that in it more enduring than iron, 

 that which no new gun can have, no matter how 

 handsome or good. 



III. THE SORROWS OF SPORTSMEN 



EVEN so happy a man as he who disports himself 

 with rod and gun has his sorrows, as has the less 

 favored mortal whose pleasure lies in walks out- 

 side of quiet woods and afar from pleasant waters. 

 Of the sportsman's vexations may be mentioned 



