A CHRISTMAS WITH "OLD PORT." 367 



huge pine log; laid my rifle handy, and at intervals 

 worked the new call. After a while a distant gobble was 

 heard. More call and nearer gobble, and I began to feel 

 very good. Soon a fine gobbler came in sight, strutting 

 and feeling his way. I had learned not to overdo the 

 calling trick, and kept silent as he advanced. I wanted 

 to get him to come within thirty yards, and then try to 

 take him in the head or neck, and utilize him for a dinner ; 

 so I watched under a limb that I had laid on top of the 

 log. He was probably fifty yards away, and my heart 

 was pumping more than was really necessary, when I 

 dropped the call, and began to scratch leaves like a hen 

 turkey looking for beech nuts, and shoved my hat up on 

 a stick to represent a turkey's back, when ! Light- 

 ning couldn't have been quicker! Something hit that 

 hat and cut my head. Feel the scar! The fact was that 

 I had called up a turkey gobbler and a wildcat or cata- 

 mount at the same time, and fooled 'em both. I didn't 

 get the turkey, and I didn't get the hat. It can't be lost, 

 for science says that nothing is lost it only changes its 

 form. Content with that assurance, I know that my hat 

 is still somewhere in this universe; perhaps a portion of 

 it has been taken up, as it decomposed, by the roots of 

 trees and plants, and so it lives in other lives, or like 



'Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 

 May stop a hole to keep the wind away.' 



"But my hat was gone, taken without so much as 'by 

 your leave,' and I only regret that I have neither the hide 

 of the catamount nor the fragments of the hat to decorate 

 my den. I can only say with Pope : 



'A heap of dust alone remains of thee, 

 Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.' 



