DRIVING 135 
Why dwell on such a day? We will not, nor need 
we mention it, but that I think it helps to give the 
other days their value. And as the sun will not always 
shine, nor the wind always blow right, nor birds : 
always come to you, neither can we, any of us, always 
be in tiptop form. Have you not often heard said, or 
said yourself, ‘I have found out what I was doing 
with those guns all last week, I was shooting 7” front 
of everything’? and then added, but not out loud, 
‘Ah! I shall never miss again.’ Fond and fatal 
delusion! You are really shooting more in front 
than last week, for you are fitter; but on your days 
of ‘rheum and cholick’ you will shoot ‘2 front of 
everything’ many a time again. The man who makes 
the most even performance is he who lives for it, and 
his is the greater certainty and the greater reputation. 
Here a word or two to my young readers. Many 
a time have I left London, as I hope they will, for a 
real good week at a place where I was most keen 
to excel. Unconsciously excited from the start, my 
keenness has increased as I sniffed the glorious air of 
a good game country on arrival. Bright eyes and 
cheerful company, ’74 champagne, ’40 port, and ’20 
brandy, to the accompaniment of reminiscences of 
flood and field, of hopes and anticipations and record- 
breaking bags, have sufficed to raise the fluid in my 
