ELLIOTT COUES. 



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 



