INTRODUCTION. 33 



ishness on the part of the young men of our Atlantic 

 cities, are desiderata much to be desired. 



For both complaints I would seriously recommend, as 

 a physician no less of the mind than of the body, moderate 

 doses of field sports, to be systematically taken, as the dis- 

 ciples of jEsculapius have it, pro re nata. 



As I have, however, little faith in the docility, obe- 

 dience or teachability of the old men, it is principally to 

 the young men, and more especially to the young men of 

 pleasant rural villages, of flourishing inland cities, and of 

 the beautiful free country itself, from the pine forests and 

 clear trout-streams of the farthest East, to the boundless 

 prairies and towering crags of the farthermost West, that 

 I commend this my complete manual of field sports. And 

 this I will promise them, that, if they will follow my pre- 

 cepts in the letter and in the spirit, although I may fail to 

 turn them out very Nimrods and perfect Izaak Waltons, I 

 will at least put them in the way of acquiring what is 

 known, as the mens sana in corpore sano in other words 

 a good appetite, a good digestion, a good constitution ; the 

 use of their limbs for the purposes to which the God of 

 nature intended them, " the slumbers light, that fly the 

 approach of morn;" the consciousness of living innocently 

 before God and manfully among men, and the certainty of 

 dying, when the time of death shall come, as it behooves 

 men to die, not misers or monkeys. 



