LOOKING FOR DEER THAT ARE OiV FOOT. 71 



ing. After more looking and carefully advancing 

 you reach the place where he was. But there is noth- 

 ing there, and there are no fresh tracks, signs, or jumps 

 to show that a deer has been there within two days. 

 You lean against a huge piece of fallen white-oak that 

 has lodged in some brush among some upturned roots 

 and of charred trunks of fallen pine, and wonder where 

 your deer is. 



Well, go back to the ridge and look at the log 

 against which you are leaning, and take a lesson quite 

 as important as any you could possibly take to-day; 

 namely, how a deer does not look in the woods. At that 

 distance and among that kind of stuff a deer would 

 not be one third as large or distinct as what you saw; 

 and if he were standing there motionless it would take 

 the very keenest of eyes to detect him. 



The sun is now getting so high that most of the 

 deer have probably left the ridges and gone off to lie 

 down; and we will leave them for another time. But 

 be not discouraged in the least by the faci; that you 

 have seen no deer. You have learned far more than 

 if you had shot one. For if you had killed one you 

 would probably have sat for a week beneath a cata- 

 ract of joy and conceit, perfectly blind to all one could 

 tell you. Few things are so fatal to ultimate success 

 as an early germination of the idea that you are "a 

 pretty smart chap on deer." It is almost as ruinous 

 as the idea that you are a poet. The teachers you 

 need are disappointment and humiliation. If these 

 cure you of still-hunting, it is well; for it proves you 

 were not born for that, and the sooner you quit it the 

 better. But if there is any of the true spirit in you, 

 defeat will only inspire you. You will learn more 

 from your failures than many do from success, and 



