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 ona 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, ad 
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, 
