Books on Big Game 



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time without eating the other. No nation facing the un- 

 healthy softening and relaxation of fibre which tend to 

 accompany civilization can afford to neglect anything 

 that will develop hardihood, resolution, and the scorn of 

 discomfort and danger. Hut if sport is made an end 

 instead of a means, it is better to avoid it altogether. 

 The greatest stag-hunter of the seventeenth century was 

 the Elector of Saxony. During the Thirty Years' War 

 he killed some 80,000 deer and boar. Now, if there ever 

 was a time when the ruler of a country needed to apply 

 himself to serious matters, it was during the Thirty 

 Years' War in Germany, and if the Elector in question 

 had eschewed hunting he might have compared more 

 favorably with GustavusAdolphus, Tilly and Wallenstein. 

 Wellington was fond of fox-hunting, but he did very 

 little of it during the period of the Peninsular War. 

 Grant cared much for fine horses, but he devoted his 

 attention to other matters when facing Lee before Rich- 

 mond. Perhaps as good an illustration as could be 

 wished of the effects of the opposite course is furnished 

 by poor Louis XVL He took his sport more seriously 

 than he did his position as ruler of his people. On the 

 day when the revolutionary mob came to Versailles, he 

 merely recorded in his diary that he had "gone out 

 shooting, and had killed eighty-one head when he was 

 interrupted by events." The particular event to which 

 this " interruption " led up was the guillotine. Not many 

 sportsmen have to face such a possibility; but they do 

 run the risk of becoming a curse to themselves and to 

 every one else, if they once get into the frame of mind 

 which can look on the business of life as merely an inter- 

 ruption to sport. 



335 



