AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
19 
into the water, — and poor Charley was lost for ever. The 
tide was then coming in, and every instant increasing; 
there was no help at hand, and we were both unable to 
swim. The agony of horror condensed into that one little 
moment, cannot be conceived or expressed in volumes. 
It seemed, that if the sum of a whole life of misery, were 
united in one wretched instant, it could not have inflicted 
more intense torture than I then felt. I looked on the dark- 
ening and turbulent waters, as they hurried along, and saw 
the supplicating agony of his upcast look, and the convul- 
sive motion of his limbs, as he struggled with the elements, 
and without pausing to consider the consequences of the 
act, plunged in, in the vain attempt to seize the arm that 
was slowly sinking away from my sight; but it eluded my 
eager hand, and his cry for help was choked by the angry 
waters, for ever. I had fortunately retained my grasp on 
the low timbers on which we had been standing at the time 
of the accident, and to this circumstance I owed my own 
preservation. I immediately raised an alarm, and search 
was speedily made with the aid of lanterns, but the body of 
poor Charley continued to slumber that night in the bosom 
of the billows. On the morrow it was discovered, and 
followed to its narrow habitation by his sorrowing school- 
mates, but none followed the little coffin with such a burst- 
ing and heavy heart, as did the one who has endeavoured 
to record the event. 
The natives of old Massachusetts seem to possess a natu- 
ral fondness for field sports; and as the old musket which 
hangs over the ingle in the farmer’s kitchen, is transmitted 
from sire to son, and in this manner successively passes 
into the hands of many generations, so also the ardent in- 
clination to use it, is transmitted with it. As the venera- 
ble old man sits in the centre of his children, at the win- 
ter fire-side, and suffering his memory to return to the 
days of his youth, recounts to them the glories and the 
hardships of his Revolutionary adventures, his finger natu- 
rally points to the time-worn weapon which occupies the 
peg over the mantel, and which was his companion in 
many a bloody field. Then does his eye kindle again with 
the martial spark, which the lapse of half a century has 
been unable to extinguish, as he remembers the day when 
he left his plough in the furrow of his father’s field, and 
shouldered his musket, and hurried away to have a shot at 
the red-coats at Lexington. Then does his aged bosom 
throb with excitement, as he calls to mind that bright 
morning when with hands trembling with ardour, he 
buckled his little knapsack to his shoulder, and hastened 
away with his father and brethren to fight under the eye 
of old Putnam, at Bunker Hill. He relates, with almost 
childish exultation, how that, hour after hour he continued 
to blaze away at the regulars, till at length not a cartridge 
remained in his box, and the point of his bayonet, and the 
butt of his musket, were his only means of defence. With 
that same well-tried weapon, and animated by the same 
patriotic spirit, he followed his darling Washington 
through the glorious wars of the Revolution, and shared 
in the perils of Yorktown, Trenton, Monmouth, Benning- 
ton, Ticonderoga, White-Plains, and Stony Point. 
If you enter any remote farm-house, embosomed amidst 
deep woods and lonely hills, you will find ancient mus- 
kets, and fowling-pieces, deposited in every corner, and 
the huge powder-horn, and rudely-fashioned shot-belts, 
depending from the wall. You will see, also, as trophies 
of rustic skill, huge antlers of the deer, displayed with an 
ostentatious pride by the honest farmer, and the skin of 
the fox, or the body of the crow and hawk, nailed, in 
terrorem, against the broad barn-door. The former of 
these is transmitted as a family heir-loom, and is valued 
accordingly, and is pointed out by the sire to the son, 
with much pardonable pride, as the relic of a noble species 
of game, often pursued and conquered in the days of his 
youth; but now, like the Indian race, nearly exterminated, 
and unknown in the land. 
In the secluded villages of New-England, every farmer’s 
son, (over two, and under seven feet in altitude,) is the 
owner of a rod and gun, with the former of which he scam- 
pers away to the neighbouring river, and with the latter 
to the surrounding woods, whenever he can elude the old 
man’s eye, or at such times as he can lawfully call his 
own, after the labours of seed-time or harvest have been 
completed. Their intimate familiarity with every retired 
path in the forests, and every tangled glade on the hill-side, 
usually renders them successful, if not adroit sportsmen. Not- 
withstanding the wretched state of their equipments, they 
will often contrive to bag game superior in quality to that 
which falls to the share of a crack sportsman, over the same 
grounds. It is not a little curious to observe the very differ- 
ent results of their respective exertions, after a comparison 
of the means and appointments of the two parties, differing 
as they do, toto ccelo. 
The one, for instance, is followed by a pointer, a setter, 
or spaniel of approved breed; and the other by a nondescript 
little cur, whose parentage would defy the most practised ge- 
nealogist in canine pedigree to trace;the one carried a thirty- 
two inch double-barrel, bearing the stamp of a foreign Man- 
ton, or a domestic Bishop, while the other groans under an 
unwieldy piece of artillery, as long as a steeple, and which 
cannot be sustained without the aid of a rest; the one is pro- 
vided with the choicest Lady-Johnson, or Dupont, and 
with shot of the right number, — while the other employs 
a vile compound which is slow to ignite, and even after 
that much-desired event takes place, burns with the tardy 
