68 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPOBTSMEN. 



chanics, John and Patrick Mullin of New York, while I 

 have seen and handled guns at 75 and 50 dollars, by the 

 former of the two makers last named, which I would have 

 preferred to any hardware-shop Birmingham gun, by a 

 nameless maker, with all its paraphernalia, at any possible 

 price. 



His fifty-dollar guns, of 30 inch barrel and 14 gauge, 

 are, in point of real utility, excellent, serviceable, cheap, 

 and perfectly safe arms. The purchaser can see them in 

 the rough, before they are filed or finished, and see of 

 what metal and stuff they are made ; or, if he be at a dis- 

 tance, can commission his friend or agent to do so for him. 

 The gun will not possess the finish, the lock will not work 

 with the same unimprovable oiliness, soundness and clear- 

 ness, as the lock of a three-hundred-dollar imported gun, 

 nor will its barrels, probably, throw the shot with the 

 same equality and regularity of distribution or force. Its 

 details will not be as accurate, nor its joints and fittings 

 as unimpeachable. But, if held straight, it will kill its 

 game, sure and dead, at thirty-eight or forty yards ; and 

 what is much better, it certainly will not kill its owner 

 which, be it said, with all deference to Messieurs the im- 



x 



porters thereof, cannot be predicated of any gun that ever 

 was imported at any such price. 



Every dollar over 50 and up to 150, will produce a 

 dollar's worth of actual improvement, and intrinsic value 

 in the article ; but when we get beyond the hundred and 

 fifty, the farther advance is for external show. I know 

 nothing beyond that, but if it seem good, to try Richards 1 

 at 35 sterling, with the duties added though I would 



