126 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
off, nineteen times out of twenty. That is a fact,” quo’ he, 
“ and there are not many men, beside us and John Verity, and 
Raynor Rock, who are up to that performance. Uncle Ben 
Raynor could do it once, and Dan thinks he can do it now; 
but, as Peter Probasco says, ‘ I have my doubts.’ Multitudi¬ 
nous sportsmen may shoot well , but none but a man of true ge¬ 
nius can shoot splendidly. Shooting, in its refinement and glory, 
is not an acquired art, a man must be born a shot, as much as 
he must be born a poet. You may learn to wing-break a starved 
pigeon, sprung out of a trap, fifteen or twenty yards off ; but to 
stop a Cock in a thick brake, where you can see him only with 
the eye of faith, or to kill a vigorous Coot, cutting the keen air, 
at daybreak, at the rate of three miles a minute—requires an 
eye, and a hand, and a heart, which science cannot manufac¬ 
ture. The doctrine of Pliny, the naturalist, contained in his 
chapter on Black Ducks, is correct beyond a question: * Le- 
gere et scribere est pcedagogi; sed op time collineare est Dei /’ 
Reading and writing are inflicted by schoolmasters, but a crack 
shot is the work of God. 
“ ‘ Them’s my sentiments,’ as Peter again says.” 
And Heaven defend that I or any other should depreciate the 
sport which can inspire * them sentiments’ to any writer. Poor 
fellow! whether he were bom a shot or no, assuredly he was 
bom a poet, the very laureate of American field sports and 
sportsmanship. Hear with what strains the flight of Canada 
Geese inspired him, and then say, gentle reader, was he not, in 
the largest sense of the word, bom a poet: 
“ They come, they tear the yielding air, with pennon fierce and strong, 
On clouds they leap, from deep to deep, the vaulted dome along; 
Heaven’s light horse, in a column of attack upon the pole 
Was ever seen, on ocean green, or under the blue sky, 
Such disciplined battalia as the cohort in your eye 
Around her ancient axis, let old Terra proudly roll, 
But the rushing flight that’s in your sight, is what will wake your soul. 
“ Hawnk! honk ! and forward to the Nor’ward, is the trumpet tone, 
What Goose can lag or feather flag, or break the goodly cone, 
Hawnk! onwards to the cool blue lakes, where lie our safe love bowera, 
