INTRODUCTION. 33 
ishness on the part of the young men of our Atlantic 
cities, are desiderata much to be desired. 
For both complaints I would seriously recommend, as 
a physician no less of the mind than of the body, moderate 
doses of field sports, to be systematically taken, as the dis- 
ciples of Aisculapius have it, pro re natd. 
As I have, however, little faith in the docility, obe- 
dience or teachability of the old men, it is principally to 
.the young men, and more especially to the young men of 
pleasant rural villages, of flourishing inland cities, and of 
the beautiful free country itself, from the pine forests and 
clear trout-streams of the farthest Hast, to the boundless 
prairies and towering crags of the farthermost West, that 
I commend this my complete manual of field sports. And 
this I will promise them, that, if they will follow my pree 
cepts in the letter and in the spirit, although I may fail to 
turn them out very Nimrods and perfect Izaak Waltons, I 
will at least put them in the way of acquiring what is 
known, as the mens sana in corpore sano—in other words 
a good appetite, a good digestion, a good constitution ; the 
use of their limbs for the purposes to which the God of 
nature intended them, “the slumbers light, that fly the 
approach of morn ;” the consciousness of living innocently 
before God and manfully among men, and the certainty of 
dying, when the time of death shall come, as it behooves 
men to die, not misers or monkeys. . 
