VOL. LXXXVI 
FEBRUARY, 1916 
No. 2 
The Metamorphosis Of A Greenhorn 
In Which He Is Constrained to Journey to A Strange Country and Enters Into A New Conception 
of Outdoor Life and Its Beneficent Influences — A Story In Three Episodes. 
Chapter I. 
ILL, it may be well to explain, 
though not actually farm-bred 
had spent a considerable part 
of his boyhood days as a tiller 
of the soil. Having arrived at 
maturity and being controlled 
by a well recognized law of 
economics, he plowed his last 
furrow, turned his back on the farm and joined 
the great army of those who, gathered in large 
communities, toil in the interstices of enormous 
piles of brick, stone and cement by day; and at 
night, like certain aborigines of the far south¬ 
west, retire to swarming galleries within huge, 
cliff-like structures, to eat and to sleep. 
Very naturally, therefore, in his later years he 
pleasurably recalled the care-free, bygone days 
when a black skunk skin enriched him to the ex¬ 
tent of a dollar or more, though the acquirement 
of the pungent article of trade uniformly resulted 
in his banishment to the woodshed till the other 
members of the family again became accustomed 
to having him within range of their nostrils; 
when the carcass of a trapped woodchuck was 
good for a five cent bounty from the family 
treasury, and if that of a young one, five cents 
additional for its table value; when, having 
blazed away with the family shot gun, he was 
able to pick up a partridge, quail, rabbit or squir¬ 
rel with which he immediately scampered home; 
and when, having discovered a nest of wild bees, 
he found the results of attempting to secure 
their honey so disappointing, not to say distress¬ 
ing, that he did not grudge the halo around the 
head of John the Baptist who, according to un- 
By W. H. Bentley. 
doubted authority, was able to gather sufficient 
apiarian treasure continuously to sustain life. 
It will readly be understood, especially by 
those whose early days were spent on a farm 
more or less remote from settled communities, 
that the amount of game destroyed by Bill was 
The Amount of Game Destroyed by Bill Was 
Not Likely to Raise Serious Concern in 
the Minds of Those Responsible for 
Its Conservation. 
not likely to raise serious concern in the minds 
of those responsible for its conservation if, in¬ 
deed, there were such in those days. His skill 
as a marksman was not of an order to disturb 
the holders of duly established records, while 
the trustworthiness of his fire arm was subject 
to more or less controversy. Either from inhe¬ 
rent truculence or resentful of inconsistency in 
its loading, it had acquired the habit of vigorous¬ 
ly kicking; and possibly because of the indiffer¬ 
ent quality of ammunition employed and lack of 
care in storing it, also exhibited a certain sloth¬ 
fulness in discharging itself commonly designat¬ 
ed as “hanging fire.” Not infrequently its con¬ 
tents were peppered into an inoffensive tree top 
or stone wall, some seconds after the squirrel or 
rabbit whose demise it was intended to bring 
about, had removed to a less dangerous locality. 
In addition to being chargeable with display of 
these questionable points of conduct, it was con¬ 
fidently asserted by those with an assumed 
knowledge of the finer features of fire arm con¬ 
struction, that its barrel failed to conform to the 
geometrical requirement that to be straight, it 
must coincide with a line representing the short¬ 
est distance between its butt and muzzle. If this 
was true, it logically followed that the most 
threatening member of the weapon conformed 
in some degree to the design approved by the late 
Baron Munchausen, for shooting ducks located 
round the circumference of a circular body of 
water. It is well known that that celebrated 
sportsman asserted he once secured at a single 
discharge of his gun, all the ducks feeding on 
the shore of a pond of that contour, by bending 
the barrel to correspond to a segment of a circle 
