3o6 The Course, the Camp, the Chase 



This was amusingly demonstrated lately, when taking 

 a pair of razors to be " set " at the cutler's shop. They 

 were given to me by my father, and had been left to him 

 by his father, whose decease occurred in 1853, and they 

 have been my toilet companions since 1874. In joke I 

 said to the shopman, " These are good steel, are they not ? 

 You do not sell such razors now ? " To which he replied, 

 after gravely examining them, " No ! why, you might shave 

 every day with them for three or four years ! It would 

 never pay to sell such steel." When I told him I had 

 been shaving with them for more than twenty years, he 

 was horrified. He took care, however, to do something for 

 trade before he returned them, for he ground more steel 

 away than had been worn in all the years that they had 

 been in use. 



In our sports the tendency for pace is shown by the 

 anxiety shown to break records, and from morning to night 

 everything seems done in a hurry. 



For producing increased celerity the cleverest brains 

 have been ever at work devising fresh aids in every phase 

 of life, and improvement follows rapidly upon improve- 

 ment. 



The mail coach of the early part of the century gave 

 way to the railway train of the " forties," but this, in 

 turn, is as much surpassed by the express corridor train 

 of the " nineties," as the " Kocket " excelled the four-horse 

 coach of the earlier period. 



When the detonating percussion cap supplanted the 

 flint-lock gun, it was deemed to be perfection, yet it had 

 to give way to the Lefauchaux breechloader, on account of 

 the increased ease and quickness in loading ; yet this 

 again, in these days of " ejectors " — with their marvellous 



