
A good run while it lasted 
Beginners Both 
Coming, Sir! 
A Beagle’s First Winter in the Field 
T is not often that one is placed in 
the delightful position of being 
forced to spend six months in com- 
plete mental relaxation while, at the 
same time, the doctors’ severest injunc- 
tion is to pass all one’s time out of 
dors, tramping or shooting, enjoy- 
ing one’s self to the utmost of one’s abil- 
ity. Yet it was my lot to find myself 
thus fortunate two years ago at the 
beginning of the rabbit season, in a 
very paradise for hunters of small 
game among the foothills of the west- 
ern slope of the Adirondacks. 
Two weeks of October had scarcely 
passed before I had determined to buy 
myself a hound, preferably a puppy, 
and, if possible, a beagle. The latter 
proved to be all too scarce; but after 
some investigation I got wind of a litter 
of beagles at McKeever. I wrote Jack 
Martin, an old friend, native, and all 
around good sportsman, and made an 
appointment for the investigation of 
the dogs. It was lucky that I did so, 
for they proved to be such beauties, 
every one, that so complete a tyro as 
myself would never have been able to 
pick and choose a good one. But Jack 
was an old hand and it took him not 
more than five minutes to point out the 
dog I wanted and get us started for 
home. 
HE puppy he selected (they were 
four months old at the time) was 
perhaps the leggiest and the quickest 
on his feet, not at all handsome as 
some of the others to my unsophisti- 
cated eyes, but he had strong well- 
padded feet that already gave promise 
of strength, though they were still 
pretty wobbly, a good head, well domed, 
150 

By WALTER D. EDMONDS, JR. 
with dark, soulful eyes, that gave him 
a semi-serious and wholly sentimental 
expression that was irresistibly whim- 
sical and winning. But in one thing I 
noticed that he excelled his brothers 
and sister; and that was his voice. 
Even then he possessed a remarkably 
strong and musical bell which put his 
mother to shame as she howled dis- 
mally in farewell. Since he has 
reached mature ‘beaglehood,’ strangers 
who have heard him running have re- 
marked on the same strength and 
charm of that “deerhound’s”’ bell. 
The author with a 
pair of hares 
I brought him home in triumph. On 
the return drive he refused to stay in 
his box, though he never cried to get 
out, but, when I allowed him to climb 
upon the seat between us, he sat there 
in a ludricrously dignified way and 
never made a move, except when he 
lost his balance on a bump. He sur- 
veyed the scenery in a calm manner, 
as if this first flight from the nest was 
an every-day occurrence. 
HERE is no need of dwelling on his 
adoption into the family except to 
say that he took to his new house, an 
old molasses barrel with some gunny- 
sacking over the mouth, like a duck to 
water and gave every evidence of in- 
tense pride in it, for he would poke 
his head out from under the bagging 
in a most droll manner of ownership 
whenever anyone entered the shed, and 
from this circumstance, he earned the 
name, “Diogenes,” with the more con- 
venient “Di” for ordinary use. 
We began after an interval of two 
days to take up this matter of rabbit 
shooting. I had not had the slightest 
experience in such things and was a 
very indifferent shot, and I set out on 
a course of training that was abso- 
lutely pure, extemporaneous theory as 
anything could be, and in the course 
of it I made many mistakes, more, per- 
haps, than the dog, but he never lost 
confidence in me, and exhibited at all 
times a most comical fidelity. 
IS first lessons in the use of his 
nose took the following form: 
After he had learned to heel, which was 
most easily taught after a few taps 
on the end of the nose with a light 
