HOW TO LEARN TO SHOOT. 133 



great proficiency can be hoped for on the wing, or at 

 running objects ; and I would undertake, with far more 

 confidence of turning him out a crack shot, a young man, 

 who had never fired a gun in his life, than one who was 

 sure death to a chipping bird on a rail, or a ground squir- 

 rel on a stone wall, at forty yards. 



This is not the case in Europe, where the children of 

 the wealthy, of landowners especially, are taught to ride 

 and shoot, from their youth upward, as regularly as to 

 read and write ; the latter especially, if not solely, with a 

 view to shooting on the wing— and where the children of 

 the poor, unless, unhappily for them, their parents chance 

 to be either poachers or gamekeepers, do not shoot at all. 



But in America, it is generally and undoubtedly the 

 case. It is the fact, which renders the rural and even 

 urban population so easily convertible into soldiers ; and 

 which, when they are converted into soldiers, renders 

 their fire so deadly. 



There are in every community hundreds on hundreds 

 of men and boys, who never had a rifle in their hands, 

 yet who on first taking one up will shoot with considerable 

 accuracy, and in a week's practice will be marksmen. 

 They have been all their lives learning, with the fowling- 

 piece, to be bad shots with that weapon, and capital shots 

 with a weapon of which, perhaps, they have never heard. 



This is precisely what they have got to unlearn, ah 

 initio, before they can become good shots at game ; but 

 their acquired skill will yet do yeoman service, when they 

 need it, with the rifle, which is more than can be said on 

 the other side of the question ; since it is hard, indeed, 



