167 



Od's flints and hammers! triggers and touch- 

 holes ! what were you about ? How rarely in 

 a man's life does it occur to have such a prize 

 presented to him ! and how have you been 

 blundering it away ! And then I am to be told, 

 " Confound the stock of this gun ! Never was 

 there so fine a shot! Could not have missed 

 it! (No to be sure!) But this ****'d long but 

 (Sir, I bar all swearing, out of the harmless 

 bounds of professional language) just tipped my 

 shoulder, as I brought it up ; and from my finger 

 bearing on the trigger, off went the charge before 

 I got a fair level." Now, Sir, confound your own 

 awkwardness ! say I. By the poking crouch of 

 your whole body, you had already thrown your 

 shoulder some inches forwarder than it had 

 any business to be ; and by the embarrassed 

 position of your arms, you had deprived them 

 of that disentangled freedom of action by which 

 the but would have cleared all, and have been 

 lodged, where it ought to have been, within the 

 point of your shoulder. I beg your pardon, if, 

 in sketching with freedom this portrait of awk- 

 ward unskilful advance, there be not some, and 

 that a material part of it, to which you may 

 sometimes catch yourself in a state of resem- 

 blance, whilst I proceed to give you what I 

 conceive to be a better example for your imita- 

 tion; by a comparison of which with your 



