HOW I BECAME A KEEPER 5 
execrable, I would feel—well, how could I help 
feeling otherwise? Whatever may have been my 
successes in other directions, from first to last I was 
a hopeless failure at touching my cap, or my hair, 
or my forehead, or whatever a keeper is supposed 
to touch with that Jack-in-the-box movement of a 
finger. Though I was scrupulously polite to those 
who were my superiors for the time being, 1 confess 
that I never tried very hard to master the finger 
trick: it always seemed to me so suggestive of a 
tip. A man must be prepared to ignore absolutely 
his own friends and relations while on duty—that is 
to say, in the presence of his employer or his guests. 
I made it an inflexible rule never to presume in any 
way, or to take the least advantage of the thought that 
in private life I was perhaps not greatly inferior to 
those with whom I sometimes was brought into 
official contact. 
The best start on the game-keeping road for a 
man outside the ordinary recruiting ranks is a 
course of instruction on a game-farm, because, 
should he discover that, after all, he would rather 
not pursue the attempt further, he can give it up, 
and,resume his former social position without let or 
hindrance: he has been only a pupil on a game- 
farm. But when once he has become a real keeper, 
worn livery, and taken any tips he is so lucky as to 
have offered him—well, that might be another thing 
altogether to those who fear the bunkers of con- 
