100 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
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 
