62 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



sixty-guinea article to be intrinsically worth its value 

 above that which they can buy for forty. 



Generally, it may be assumed that the sixty-guinea 

 maker pays higher wages than his competitor who sells 

 for forty. It may be answered the price is sustained by 

 the name. Be it so ; the name must have been originally 

 gained by something beyond luck — for luck never made a 

 fowling-piece ; and by that something which gained it, the 

 name must be sustained. That something is superior 

 workmanship — in all such houses the best of material may 

 be assumed — and I believe fully that the workmanship of 

 the highest priced is superior to that of the lower priced 

 London maker, in full proportion to the superiority of his 

 charges; and I believe the same thing to be yet more 

 clearly the case, as between the London and the provincial 

 maker. 



I perceive that this opinion is not likely to be the 

 popular one, for there are of course fifty men, especially in 

 this country, who will buy a Westley Richards gun for 

 two hundred dollars, where there is one who will buy a 

 London gun for twice that sum. And as every man who 

 owns a gun, believes it, and is prepared to maintain it, to 

 be the best gun in the world ; therefore there are always 

 fifty best Westley Richards guns, where there is one best 

 London gun. Again, every gunmaker so soon as he ascer- 

 tains that his customer will go as high as the price of a 

 Westley Richards', but cannot be possibly induced to rise 

 to a, London value, assures him, in the most positive man- 

 ner, that Westley Richards' guns are in every respect equal 

 to Purday's, or whose you will ; and that the difference is 



