108 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



this new-fangled machinery of loops and buttons, and I 

 don't know what." 



"And you, Master Frank," retorted Harry, nothing 

 daunted, "to be a good shot and a good sportsman — which, 

 with some few exceptions, I must confess you are — are the 

 most culpably and wilfully careless about your appoint- 

 ments I ever met. I don't call a man half a sportsman, 

 who has not every thing he wants at hand for an emerg- 

 ency, at half a minute's notice. Now it so happens that 

 you cannot get, in New York at all, anything like a 

 descent game-bag — a little fancy-worked French or Ger- 

 man jigmaree machine you can get anywhere, I grant, 

 that will do well enough for a fellow to carry on his 

 shoulders, who goes out robin- gunning, but nothing for 

 your man to carry, wherein to keep your birds cool, fresh, 

 and unmutilated. Now, these loops and buttons, at which 

 you laugh, will make the difference of a week at least in, 

 the bird's keeping, if every hour or so you empty your 

 pockets — wherein I take it for granted you put your birds 

 as fast as you bag them — smooth down their plumage 

 gently, stretch their legs out, and hang them by the heads, 

 running the button down close to the neck of each. In 

 this way this bag, which is, as you see, half a yard long, 

 by a quarter and half a quarter deep, made double, one 

 bag of fustian, with a net front, which makes two pockets 

 — will carry fifty-one quail or woodcock, no one of them 

 pressing upon, or interfering with, another, and it would 

 carry sixty-eight if I had put another row of loops in the 

 inner bag; which I did not, that I might have the bottom 

 vacant to carry a few spare articles, such as a bag of 

 Westley Eichards' caps, and a couple of dozen of Ely's 

 cartridges." 



"Oh! that's all very well," said Frank, "but who the 

 deuce can be at the bore of it?" 



"Why be at the bore of shooting at all, for that matter ?" 

 replied Harry — "I, for one, think if a thing is worth 

 doing at all, it is worth doing well-^and I can't bear to 

 kill a hundred or a hundred and fifty birds, as our party 

 almost always do out here, and then be obliged to throw 

 them away, just for want of a little care. Why, I was 

 shooting summer cock one July day two years ago — there 

 had been heavy rain in the early morning, and the grass 



