100 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SFOETSMEN. 



Again, every man who loves his gun should make it a 

 point to clean it with his own hands. It is all very well 

 in Europe, where the sportsman has a gamekeeper at his 

 elbow who knows how to clean a gun, better than he does 

 himself, and who takes as much pride in having it clean as 

 he, to trust it to his servant. 



I have shot, more or less, twenty-five seasons in Amer- 

 ica, and having body-servants all the time, never had one 

 to whom I would intrust the cleaning of a valuable piece. 

 I have always cleaned my own gun before sleeping, or if 

 I have been too much beaten with work to do so, have in- 

 variably, after seeing it as well done as a man could 

 accomplish at night, given it a thorough and fresh going 

 over, before using it in the morning. 



The mode and process is as follows : 



Bring your locks to half-cock, take the ramrod out of 

 the pipes, and the barrels out of the stock, screw the brass 

 jag into the lower end of a solid cleaning rod — not one of 

 the trumpery, jointed ebony or mahogany sticks which 

 come in the gun-case — but a tough, seasoned hickory staff, 

 of nearly half an inch diameter, about four inches longer 

 than the barrels, with a saw-cut handpiece. Wrap the jag 

 as thickly with the finest and cleanest tow, as the bore of 

 the barrels to be cleaned will admit. Moisten this tow, 

 and insert it into the muzzle ; plunge the breeches of both 

 barrels into a bucket of cold water, some four or six inches 

 deep. Some persons advise hot water ; not so I. Hot 

 water cakes and hardens the dirt in the barrels ; cold 

 dissolves and loosens it. Work the rod up and down, 

 like the sucker of a pump, first in one barrel, then in the 



