ELLIOTT COVES. 29 
about birds than suffer such grievous evil to be brought 
upon his spiritual nature by their innocent instrumentality. 
The whole lesson he might otherwise have learned from them 
has been missed in that event, and one way in which birds 
may be useful to his finer feelings has been entirely lost, if 
he has perversely failed to be taught by these beautiful ob- 
jects to be humane toward them, and feel a kindly, sym- 
pathetic sense of kinship with their bright and joyous lives, 
I shall never forget the first bird I ever shot—a Chipping 
Sparrow, when I was about fourteen years old, when I first 
went into the woods with some other boys, one of whom had 
a gun, and seemed to me as big as a man in consequence, 
though I think now it was a gun quite as dangerous at the 
butt as at the muzzle. When it came my turn to shoot, I 
was so excited I could hardly hold the thing; I trembled 
all over, and my breath came short. But I took good aim, 
withstood the shock of the explosion, and ran with the other 
boys to pick up my poor little victim. As I handled the 
tiny gory body, limp and ruffled, and smelt the odor of hot 
blood mingled with the smoke of burnt gunpowder, a sort of 
frenzy seized me, which now seems little short of a devilish 
intoxication, and my dreams were feverish that night. Many 
years passed before the identical sensation recurred, from 
the same savor of gunpowder and blood, but it was human 
blood this time, spilled in the thick of an Indian massacre 
in Arizona, when I was a young army officer. I mention 
these two incidents, remote from each other in time and 
place, still further apart in relative gravity, yet having some- 
thing absolutely in common, because each produced the 
same effect. I think this must be the very soul or spirit of 
wanton cruel killing ; and if so, it is a very terrible thing, to 
be sedulously shunned as a thing wholly evil in its nature. 
I can conceive of few things more horrible than to be held fast 
under such a spell. Yet habitual indulgence of the propen- 
sity to kill brings about something even more injurious to 
the soul than any cruelty one can commit in a moment of 
