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successful, practice of the whole corps, in. scorn 

 of all attempt to send any of them back to the 

 drudgery of the drill, for the correction of some 

 habitual awkwardness, the unperceived source 

 of occasional errors, which they are every now 

 and then set a-swearing by, I will freely tell 

 them, that they have my leave to blunder and 

 blaspheme on to the end of the chapter, and 

 that this book of mine was not written for 

 them. They have been suffered to run lewd in 

 their own way, out of all dread of the whip, 

 during too many years, for me to undertake the 

 worse than hopeless task of breaking them in 

 at this time of day : I am not equal to it. 



If, however, lowering a little the proud pre- 

 tensions of their unexamined practice, under 

 some conscious recoil of their own errors, they 

 should be disposed to approach, and to talk a 

 little civilly with me, I beg to assure them, that 

 they will find me more than ready to allow all 

 they have to say in favour of the real shot, the 

 thing itself. To keep down the flutter of expec- 

 tation, to conquer the alarm on spring, and to 

 be familiar with the differing flights of the dif- 

 ferent species of game, itself a circumstance of 

 no inconsiderable importance, must be the result 

 of a continued actual service only : it can not 



