DRIVING 137 
care on first arriving at the scene of your week’s sport 
will keep you fairly right. Eschew the late afternoon 
tea, which is too often only a severe astringent dose of 
tannic acid, rendered still more noxious by luxuriantly 
buttered toast ; eat and drink lightly at dinner, make 
but moderate love (this book is not written for ladies, 
and if it were they must know that ‘there is causes 
and occasions why and wherefore in all things,’ as 
Fluellen says) ; curtail the hour of the smoking-room 
and the consumption of the weed ‘by one half; the 
spirits and soda altogether ; and when you go to bed 
take about a teaspoonful of mixed bicarbonate of soda 
and ditto of potass ; then you will.sleep, as well as 
wake, cool and fit to take your part, at any rate up to 
your usual capacity, in the day’s sport. 
This to those who wish to feel there is no distance 
they cannot walk, no bird they might not kill, and no 
one they could possibly hate, in short, to feel fit and 
shoot really well. To some others, if they will for- 
give me, I would say, Eat the buttered toast, swallow 
the tea, drink the champagne, discuss the port and 
sample the ‘old,’ make love to the prettiest woman, 
tell all the best stories and sing the latest songs, 
smoke the largest regalia and go to bed last, in short, 
enjoy everything, but don’t for the love of heaven 
go out shooting. And who knows but that you may 
