CHAPTER XIII 
MY BROTHER KEEPERS 
Varieties of keeper—The backbiting keeper—‘ Previous to a cold'— 
The privileged keeper—The diplomatic keeper—Stock phrases 
—Keepers as sportsmen—The jealousy of keepers—The extrava- 
gant keeper—The exaggerating keeper—The ‘some’ birds 
keeper. 
I sEcIN with the man who has followed the occupa- 
tion of game-keeping all his life—in some cases 
even to the exclusion of learning to read and write. 
It has always rather amused me to watch the 
manner in which such men seize every chance to 
emphasize the fact that their brothers who have not 
actually spent every moment of their lives as game- 
keepers are not as they. Take the case of a man 
who, as a boy, did a little boot-cleaning. When in 
after years he is cursed with enteritis on the rearing- 
field, while a lifelong keeper is lucky enough to 
have no such calamity, the latter will glory in 
running down the former, on every possible occasion, 
all because he has added the art of game-keeping to 
the accomplishment of boot-cleaning. ‘Why, yer 
can’t expect no otherwise. What do’e know about 
rearing? Mixin’ blackin’s more in ’is line than 
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