CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



length, and a musket that, according to an old tradi- 

 tion, had been out both in the Seventeen and Forty- 

 five. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by 

 rotation to gun or musket, each boy retaining posses- 

 sion for a single day only; but then the shooting sea- 

 son continued all the year. They must have been of 

 admirable materials and workmanship; for neither of 

 them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' 

 War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, 

 must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in dis- 

 guise, was a perfect devil for kicking when she re- 

 ceived her discharge; so much so indeed, that it was 

 reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be 

 knocked down by the recoil. She had a very wide 

 mouth — and was thought by us "an awfu' scatterer'**; 

 a qualification which we considered of the very high- 

 est merit. She carried any thing we chose to put into 

 her — there still being of all her performances a loud 

 and favourable report — balls, buttons, chucky-stanes, 

 slugs, or hail. She had but two faults — she had got 

 addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burn- 

 ing priming, and to another of hanging fire; habits 

 of which it was impossible, for us at least, to break 

 her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new 

 series of flints; but such was the high place she justly 

 occupied in the affection and admiration of us all, 

 that faults like these did not in the least detract 

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