My Boyhood Among the Pigeons 3 



"Mother, I am going for pigeons to-morrow morn- 

 ing! Do call me if I oversleep. I must be awake by 

 four o'clock. We'll have pigeon pot-pie to-morrow. 

 I'm going to bed early so as to be sure to be up by day- 

 break. Old Sport is going along to 'fetch' dead birds." 



"Hello, dad," cries a voice in my ear, "what are you 

 up to ? What are you hustling around so for with your 

 old shot pouch and powder-flask? There's nothing to 

 shoot this time of the year." 



The spell is broken ; my own boy fetches his daddy out 

 of his dream, and I am fairly caught in the act of 

 making an old fool of myself. My youngsters are 

 counting the days before May first when I have 

 promised to take them trout-fishing, and the smallest 

 boy found his first gun in his stocking last Christmas. 

 But they can know nothing at all about the joys and 

 excitement of pigeon shooting in the vanished days 

 when these birds fairly darkened the sky above our old 

 homestead. But I try to tell them what we used to do 

 and my story sounds something like this: 



"It is early in the spring, so early that a bunch of 

 snow may yet be found on the north side of the largest 

 of the fallen trees in the woods. Puddles that the melt- 

 ing snow left in the hollows of the clearing are fringed 

 with ice this morning, and we look around and tell each 

 other, 'There was a frost last night.' The mud in the 

 road has stiffened, and the rutted cattle tracks are also 

 streaked and barred with ice. Yet winter has gone and 



