University of Virginia Library

COLLINEOMANIA.

1. NO. I.
RAMBLING REMINISCENCES OF
ANCIENT HUNTERS.

Virg. Georg. 3.

Chorus to Bright Phœbus.

No; we will not look upon the hunters of Kentucky yet;
the mighty dead of other days claim first our admiring contemplation.
It will be good for us to look at their portraits in
Time's old diorama—to see them face to face through History's
faithful theodolite.

What an innumerable army! Patriarchs, sages, kings,
heroes, inspired, demigods, sacred, profane! Blessed is thy
memory, O son of Cush, and thy name glorious, captain of the
host, and father and beginner of all hunting! Of whom else
doth the historian bear record, that he “was a mighty hunter
before the Lord?”

Posterity hath not done justice to Nimrod. Even Josephus
barely mentions him, and we are left entirely in the dark as
to the character of his game and the weapons of his craft.

It is not vain, however, nor improper, as we hope, to speculate
upon a matter which, to hunters, is a subject of such

thrilling interest. May we not, then, imagine and believe,
that the founder of Babel was one of the giants of those days,
and that his armory was fashioned in the workshop of that
skilful artificer, Tubal Cain, and that he hunted the mastodon
and magatherion? But let every man think for himself.—
We said that posterity had not done justice to Nimrod. We
ought to except from this censure those good poets Tickell
and Somerville. They have both glorified him in verse.
Their researches, whether of fact or fancy, are worthy of the
attention of the judicious antiquarian.[1]

It would argue gross ignorance, or else wilful malice, not
here to name the unfortunate Esau. He, too, was a “cunning
hunter, a man of the field.” Frequent, doubtless, were
the nights when the dutiful son, returning tired from the hunt,
comforted his kind old father's heart with a saddle of good
venison, the trophy of his trusty bow and quiver. But alas!
alas!—there are passages in the life of Esau upon which we
cannot bear to dwell—themes too high. Let us pass on.

Who cometh next? Truly, Samson, Milton's Samson Agonistes,
beyond challenge a keen hunter. This honorable reputation
he worthily acquired by his capture, adjunction and adignition
of the three hundred foxes, which he turned among

his father-in-law's grain-stacks, to punish him for trading away
his wife when he was temporarily absent from the family-For
one man to catch three hundred foxes, upon one hunting
expedition, or even in the course of a whole season, it requires
not only great strength, but much ingenuity, earnest perseverance,
faithful patience, good love, and good luck. Samson
was an uncommon man.

We take occasion here to caution the scrupulous reader to
look not upon us as a Philistine. We desire to be understood
as making these references to the hunters of the by-gone days
of Palestine, with no sceptical levity, but with faithful reliance
upon recorded facts. We will further remark, that
great as was the performance last referred to, yet we believe
it may be accomplished by a man of extraordinary powers,
without the aid of any miraculous assistance. We esteem
that it was so accomplished, and that it was one of the ordinary
occurrences in the life of the hunter Samson. As such it is
our duty to record it here. As such, we celebrate the enterprise,
and enshrine it with its author in our gallery of hunters.

But let us look upon the profane and the mythological, and
then, peradventure, we may be permitted to moralize, without
restraint. The Heathen celebrated mighty hunters. Great
is his glory, who is vouched for by Diodorus and the almost
Christian Cicero. A poet's incarnation he may be, but people
seem to believe in him, and to recognize and to worship his
attributes. Do we ever say Samsonian? No; we always
call it a “Herculean” task. Son of Alcmena, fortunate were
the irregular nuptials of thy honored parents! Happy was
the earth, when thou wert delivered to deliver her of Hydras
and Chimæras. Happy was the sky which received thee
back to rule the seasons,—as some, not vain, imagine,—and
to quaff old nectar with thy father Jupiter.

But we have no sympathy with people specially gifted.
Hence we contemplate the exploits of demigods with cold
wonder only, and not with the hearty enjoyment with which
we listen to the story of a sporting friend, who is like ourselves,
and from a knowledge of whose character we may
judge of the extent of the embellishments. Moreover, it is
hard to comprehend the glory of cutting off dragon's heads,
and doing such other deeds of desperate valor as the biographers
of Hercules have, with commendable particularity, set
down to stimulate our ambition. For one thing, however, we
love as well as admire the hunters of old times. They had
the true spirit of chivalry in them. Hunters were patriotic,
and generous, before printing and gunpowder were invented.
Now, we offer rewards to men to do themselves a pleasure,
and give bounties for dead wolves and crows.

Theseus, Castor, and Pollux. It is almost ludicrous to
think of one of these heroes sending in an affidavit, duly sworn
to according to law, and claiming from the overseers of the
town a ten dollar bill for shooting down a wild cat.

Nestor, Ulysses, Diomedes, swift-footed Achilles. Xenophon
tells us that these were all mighty hunters. But they were
statesmen, warriors, and benefactors, too. By Diana! When
we think of these, and of some glorious few other such ancient
megatherial earth-gods, who made for history and poetry a subject
and a beginning, our anger waxeth hot at the assurance of
the muskrat-catching poachers of modern times, who affect to
call themselves hunters. They are blasphemers. They take
the name in vain. Saint Saggitarius forefend that we should
shoot an undeserved arrow at the bear-hugging Colonel
Crockett! But our conscience pricks our judgment to pronounce
its denial that he can challenge any better claim to
the laurels of a hunter than a half-shrived ghost in purgatory

can put forth to a fee-simple foot-hold among the stars. There
is no registry of the name of clown-hunter in any book of
heraldry that we wot of.

Multo majora canamus.—Is there any thing more glorious
in fact, or in fancy, than the impersonation of the chaste, virgin,
huntress goddess? Worthily was she mistress and queen
of the chase. We seem to see her now, her maidens all put
forth, bending from her firmamental throne, to whisper a kiss
upon the fair brow of Endymion, innocent youth, as he lies,
cold and tired, on the summit of old Latmos. Now a beam
from her eye falls upon the expecting boy; and now—a
cloud hides them from us, and our vision is gone! We confess,
that if we were to catch the moon in company with Endymion,
we should be apt to be revengeful, and furnish another
proof of the truth of the old maxim, that “three spoils company.”
There should be no eclipse, nor any other sort of fun
that night. We would punish the proud Dian for her cruel
treatment of the unwittingly offending Actæon. A hunter, he,
and a brave. Her worshipper. And yet, forsooth, because,
with no malice aforethought, and by mere accident, he happened
to stumble upon her one day in the woods when she
was not dressed for company, she must needs metamorphose
him into a stag, and set upon him his own rapacious dogs!
Out upon such savage prudery! Nephele, and Hyale, and
Rhenis, and Psecas, and Phiale, and all the rest of ye, heartless
nymphs! We have no patience with your affectation,
making your mistress to act like a very lunatic![2]

Unhappy Actæon! “Sic illum fata ferebant.” Bad luck

was thine in truth. What a horrible host of blood-hounds he
had upon him! It makes one's blood to run cold, even only
to hear their names. Let us look into the excellent Mr. John
Clarke, and read a portion of his translation, for the benefit of
juvenile students.

“First Blackfoot, and the good-nosed Tracer, gave the signal
by a full-mouthed cry.”—Cry;—Every deer-hunter knows
what that cry is;—the deep, beautiful, musical, bay, that
breaks upon your extatic ear, bearing the knowledge of the discovered
game. “He now flies through places where before
he had often pursued. Alas! he flies from his own servants.
He would fain cry out, I am Actæon, know your master.
Words are wanting to his inclination; the air rings with the
cry. Black-hair made the first wound upon his back; Killdeer
the next; Rover stuck fast upon his shoulder. They
came out later than the rest, but their way was soon dispatched
by a short cut across the mountain. Whilst they hold their
master, the rest of the pack come in, and stick their teeth together
into his body. Now room is wanting for more wounds.
He groans and makes a noise, though not of a man, yet such
as a buck could not make, and fills the well-known mountains
with sad complaints; and as a suppliant upon bended knees,
and like one asking a favor, he turns about his silent countenance.
But his companions, ignorant of their wretched prey,
encourage the ravenous pack with their usual cries, and look
around, mean time, for Actæon; and call for him loudly, as if
he were absent, Actæon! Actæon! He turns his head at
the name, as they complain that he is not there to enjoy the
sight of the game presented to them. Glad would he be, indeed,
to be away; but he is there, against his will; and glad
would he be to see, and not feel, the cruel violence of his
dogs. They hang upon him, and thrusting their snouts into

his body, tear to pieces their master, under the shape of a
false buck. And the rage of the quiver-bearing Diana is said
not to have been exhausted until his life was ended by many
wounds.”

Such was the awful consequence of looking upon a woman
without permission! How full is history of friendly beacons
to warn young men of danger!

We will hang up one more portrait in our gallery. Thine,
Adonis, thine; thou loved one of Cytherea. Thou, too, lost
thy life in the chase, but not ingloriously, and the gods made
provision for thee after thy demise. We must be excused, O
Adonis, from being sorrowful because of that wild boar's tooth
sending thy soul to the skies, for Venus wept for thee, and
Bion hath embalmed thee. Many bards have sung thy elegy.
Reader, knowest thou the flower Anemony? It thou be uninstructed,
seek some wise woman, and get understanding;
and know, and love, in that little budling, the metamorphosed
mortal parts of the tender-cheeked hunter Adonis.

There is a more modern antiquity, that boasteth excellent
hunters. Shall we see these worthies? We know a process
—a charm—we can hold communion with their ghosts!—We
have had such nights with the old hunters! Dost thou dare
to see them? We will warrant thee they are busy at some
sport. Behold now, we shut our earthly eyes. We speak
the spell that cannot be heard by mortal. Now it is all dim.
Now light slowly breaks, and lo! the Elysian fields. There,
down in a green valley, are met the ghosts of all the dead
hunters of the world. They are shooting at a target. Heard
you that whiz? See you not that arrow quivering in the
bull's eye? 'T was a well-aimed shot. It was Arthur drew
the string—immortal he of the round-table—not that modern
Arthur, who—we must give this lamp a turn or it will—there;

that will do.—But our vision! alas! it is gone. So ever it
fares with the introduction of an unpleasant guest. One such
will banish a whole room full of good company. We could
get into a passion now, and curse—the Devil and his works.
We have a right to do that. It would be highly improper to
bless them, or to speak respectfully of them. But it is better
to be benevolent. We will curse no one, not even Scotch
George Thompson. May God, if it be possible, assoilsie even
him.—

Let us summon our hunting friends. Come hither, ye hunters
of ancient days, be present to our desires, and hold with
us sweet converse—

No, no; we want no black spirits. The colored gentlemen,
if any, will please to stay below—

Look where they come. A goodly company, Nature's aristocracy.
Substantial shadows—glorious! will they speak?
What music is this like the doubtful concord of clanging
armor, and waving plumes, and ringing steel, and neighing
steeds, and twanging bow-strings, and a harp touched by a
skilful minstrel! like

Who is this hoary headed bard? Gracious presence, suffer
us, as much as may be lawful, to worship thee! Thou art
old Cadwallo, whose tongue inexorable Edward made cold;
and thou hast sung in bower, and banquet hall, the praises of
brave hunters. Be, we pray thee, one of our household gods.

—How they burn on our eyelids! changing, and mixing with
each other, and mingling with the air, and then standing out
more accurately developed. Apollo sustain us! Turks,
Tartars, Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Britons—What
gorgeous trappings have those hunters of the East! Genghiskhan
glittering with gold and burnished steel! He, who,
like that Mogul Vizir, Asaph ap Dowlah, hunted with several
battalions of infantry, encompassing roaring hecatombs, and
the tigers upon a thousand hills! What queen is that he
jostleth? Doth she not stand Boadicea, confessed, bearing a
mighty spear? And lo! a troop of high-born ladies, spurning
the earth with their eager palfreys, each equipped for to
ride a—
Delicate heroines—fawns chasing blood-hounds; tender-hearted
murderers, killing with your bright eyes more than
with your keen arrows! Hail! Gaston, Earl of Foix! gallant
gentleman! true knight! with thy army of dogs, six hundred!
Pass on.—Saint George! who with his good sword
Ascalon smote that gigantic dragon, having fifty feet between
his shoulders and tail, under the left wing, where no scales
were, and delivered his country. The Percy out of Northumberland!
and doughty Douglas!—good friends now. The
seven champions of Christendom!—Sir Bevis, Sir Tristam,
Sir Thopas! How stately are these old king hunters. Alfred
the great, wise and good;—solemn Athelstan;—Cnut,
the Dane;—Edward the Confessor;—of whom sayeth the
accurate Malmsbury, that although he was better fitted for the
cloister than the field, yet he took great delight to follow a
pack of swift hounds, and to cheer them with his voice;—
William the Norman, conqueror of men as well as beasts;—
William Rufus, whose life ran out with the blood staining a
treacherous arrow. What a throng of them! Edward—all
the Edwards! Harry—all the Harrys! Even pedantic king
Jamie, believer in witchcraft, who hath written also of hunting
with hounds in Basilikon Doron;[3] giving it questionable precedency
over archery and falconry; unlike thee, venerable
Roger! schoolmaster and laureate of the school of shooting,
who hath written a book to illustrate the glory of the bow;
proving it to be the fountain of wisdom, health, wealth, and
virtue.[4] And, O delight! here be Robin Hood and little John,
Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudlesly!
Welcome, welcome, bold archers! Let us embrace ye, O
better than kings! ye original unsophisticated democrats!
How Tammany Hall would adore if it were only given her
to know ye!

That last imagination hath dashed down our cup of joy.
We can see no more beyond the sight of the flesh. We are
alone,

into the company of sainted hunters, is departed. Royalty,
and knight-errantry, and beauty, and valor have sunk into
eternal chaos.

We are the friend and apologist of Robin Hood, outlaw
though he was. Hear how he may be forgiven;

What though he hunted in the royal forest, contrary to the
form of the statute in such case made and provided, entertaining
an hundred tall men upon haunches of the king's fat
bucks. Was not the charter unconstitutional? a rank monopoly
of the merry green-wood? Were not the game laws
tyrannical, cruel, unendurable by brave souls, heaven created
warriors, the freest hearts, the strongest arms—in all merry
England? What though he denied that property could be
held in fee simple, and that he pressed the doctrine of “equal
rights” with perhaps too earnest zeal; yet was he not gallant,
humane, magnanimous, and a sincere friend to the poor?
Hearken to the testimony of the anthentic Stow;—“He suffered
no woman to be oppressed, violated or otherwise molested;
poore men's goods he spared, abundantlie relieving
them with that which, by theft, he got from abbeys, and the
houses of rich carles; whom Major—the historian—blameth
for his rapine and theft, but of all theeves he affirmeth him to
be the prince, and the most gentle theefe.”

Well! he was a practical leveller; that seems to be his
offence. And is that unpardonable? Lo! even holy friars,
and other good men, divers, have taught that the rich are
merely trustees for the poor, and that goods and chattels are
only lent to them. Shall he be condemned who executes the
judgments of brotherly love and justice? God forbid. Robin,
we take thy hand before the whole world, and call thee a good

fellow. Thou shalt have our vote for any office thou desires
in the shades.

Those other yeomen named with Robin and little John,
must not be lightly passed over. Modern times are shamed
by their strength and skill. William of Cloudlesley, with an
arrow from his bow, cleft a hazel rod in twain, at the distance
of four hundred yards; and with another arrow shot
an apple from his boy's head, at the distance of one hundred
and twenty-five yards! Is there any gentleman hunter extant
who will shoot against this performance? Bring up
your rifles, and your boys, good people. William and his
associates, we regret to admit, had some vague and indefinite
notions on the subject of other people's property; and it does
not appear that they were so discriminate as Robin Hood.
But then they all repented, and were pardoned by the king,
and were confessed by the bishop, and the king made William
a gentleman, and gave him eighteen pence a day to bear
his bow, and the queen gave him thirteen pence a day, and
made his wife her chief gentlewoman; and then these good
yeomen went forth and got cleansed with holy water,

And so finally concludeth the legend;—

Amen! amen! with all our heart. Three cheers for the
ghosts of Adam Bell & Co. Go it boys! hur—wait for the
word;—Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

Much remains to be said of hunting. Many hunters remain

unsung. We have only brief moments to commemorate that
exquisite fancy of the sport, fierce and gentle falconry.

We have a notion, that of all delights that ever it was given
to man to enjoy, this must have been the most delightful.—
Gentlemen of the cockpit, a fight in the air between a pigeon
hawk and a blue heron!—Bold was he, and cunning, who
first tamed the fiercest birds of prey, and taught them to sit
upon his fist, to fly at his command, to pursue, to strike, to return,
docile, faithful servants. Gentle, eager, and as humble,
and fond of the sport as our own good setters, Horatio.—Think
of the king of birds soaring to the third heaven, and then
hovering and swooping, and hovering and swooping, until, as it
were, he could get good sight, and then, with terrible certainty,
dashing down upon the devoted shoulders of an antlered
monarch of the scrub oaks, and tearing out his brains, at the
command of a master! Imagine you duck hawk,—falco
peregrinus—tamed, and thrown off, unhooded, from your fist,
mounting into upper air, and thence, with lightning speed,
striking out a wild gander from a flock of straining honkers,
and then, conscious, of his deserved reward, sailing back to
the bondage of his accustomed jesses! Why, people now-a-days
do not understand the virtue of birds. We are neophytes
in ornithology and ornithodynamics. We hardly know
“a hawk from a hand-saw.”

For ourselves, it is our delight to read and dream of the
goodly companies of noble knights and high-born dames of
olden time, riding out with princely attendance to fly their
hawks. We seem to hear their prancing steeds, and their
gentle

their happy voices, and the dogs beating the bushes by the
stream-side. We see the bittern flushed; and then, falcon,
and marlyon, and gos-hawk, quick unhooded, and upsailing.
We hear the tinkling of their silver bells—we see the general
rush of the whole happy throng following the pursuit—our
breath is quick—up, up soars the bittern in lessening gyration
higher and yet higher, to keep, if, alas! he may, keep above
his unpitying pursuers, and avoid their fatal beaks. Vain
hope! that falcon hath o'ertopped him, and now he pounces,
and the poor victim feels death in his struck skull, and surrenders
his life among the stars!

Not always victorious is the falcon. There are vicissitudes
in the war. The hern hath a long, strong, straight, sharp-pointed
bill; and if the hawk be unwary, he will spit his
breast upon the dangerous spear thrown up to receive him,
and, pierced through and through with a fatal wound, die ingloriously.
We know a kindred bird, which baymen call “the
straight-up;” a biped something between the heron and the
quaack, that is competent to do good execution after this wise.
—We once ourselves, unhappy, received a fearful thrust in
our dexter, from a scoundrel whom we had wing-broken on a
salt marsh, which disabled us from pulling a trigger for a good
fortnight.—Somerville describes the performance to the life
—to the death;—

Henry Inman! wilt thou not paint this picture? It is a
striking illustration of “catching a tartar.”

We are determined to become a faulkoner. We will build

us a mew and an aërie, and we will speak to some country
friend to catch us a young hen-hawk, and a few butcher-birds,
and we will revive the science. We know a pleasant meadow,
where the curlew screams, and the straight-up flaps his
heavy wings, and the newly-paired seges of blue herons sit
solemn by the border of the interwinding rivulet, watching,
with hungry patience, what truant eel, or backsliding young
crab, leaving the safe channel, shall “coldly furnish forth
their marriage breakfast,” and dear Mary shall ride with us
to the green rushes, and—

Here Mary, leaning over our shoulder, shakes us gently by
the ear, and reminds us that we are impecunious, and points
to a passage in aristocratic, cross, old Burton, and reads to
us unwilling—we confess we hate the truth sometimes—as
follows; “Hunting and hawking are honest recreations, and
fit for some great men; but not for every base, inferior person.”

“That is not we, Mary dear. Docti Sumis; we are a
gentlemen bred, and educated, and”—

“Fiddle-de-dee; what are birth and education in a bank
note world? listen! listen! `who while they maintain their
faulkoner, and dogs, and hunting nags, their wealth runs away
with their hounds, and their fortunes fly away with their
hawks.' ”

Reader, farewell! We are melancholy.

2. NO. II.

Roger Ascham.

We have heretofore reviewed the Brigades of ancient hunters,
as they tramped before us magnificently upon the parade
ground of history; from Captain General Nimrod, and stately
riding Queen Diana, down to those savage Loco Focos, Robin
Hood and Little John. Something now is due to the vanatical
artillery of later days. The hunter tribe is not extinct. Collineomania
rages yet. Human nature is still projectilitarian.
The same excellent love of destruction that moved the old
world to swing the catipult, and scatter javelins and arrows,
urges on this modern age of civilization and philanthropy, to
throw rockets, hot water, and cold lead.

But our present business is not with human wars, and the
Peace Society. Whether the shooting of men be honest and
honorable, we leave to the determination of that fighting
school of the General Assembly, which shall prove itself to
be most meek and most forbearing.

Beasts, and birds, we have an unchallengeable right, and
oftentimes, unquestionable duty, to transfix. This birth-obligation
of every freeman, was first imposed by that never-to-be-too-much-prized
article in the constitution of human nature, which
gave to the lords of the creation, dominion over the fowls of
the air, and the fish of the sea. We have the authority from
Heaven, and the recommendation from Earth. “Kill and
eat,” was hieroglyphickied upon the shooting jacket of Esau.
Peter, the Apostle, saw it in his dream, as the tenth chapter
of Acts bears testimony. And now we are all shooters. To
be a Collineomaniac, is only to fulfil worthily, and with prudent
enthusiasm, a duty, which nature hath allowed, good example
hath approved, and honesty, skill, art, health, and happiness,
recommend.

To descend, from ancient fashions of contrived death, to
Joe Manton, Westley Richards, Miss Nancy Hawker, and
percussion caps—is it a fall, my countrymen, or not? That
thought suggests gunpowder. Talk of the invention of the
printing press, and all its attendant honors of light and knowledge!
it has not effected one tithe of the changes in the physical
condition of the world, which have been wrought by the
discovery of the virtue of combined nitre, sulphur, and granulated
charcoal. We fling no more javelins,—we thrust no
more spears,—unless it be into a porpoise or a whale, but we
kill our lions with four pounders from the back of a well-trained
elephant, our buffaloes with Kentucky rifles, and our
woodcock with the familiar pills of number Eight. That is a
pathetic discourse, which Cervantes reads in Don Quixotte of

the death of Chivalrie in the elaborations of Rogers, Pigou
and company. But it is not all true. Strength, muscular excellence,
personal skill, and all honorable accomplishments
have not lost their recommendation utterly. It is true that
the tyrants of the land have been changed from stalworth
knights and grim barons, into bank directors, and obtainers of
other people's goods under peaceable pretences, for whom
it is not necessary to know any thing but arithmetic, and a
little criminal law; but the honest hunter's vocation and the
amateur's occasional indulgence, require all the virtues which
belonged to a lover of the sport in the olden time. A man
must sometimes stand up against a grizzly bear, and use his
shooting-knife, after he has put a dozen buck-shot into that
“interesting individual.” We have known a well-antlered
deer, who did not believe his time had come, to make good
fight in the last moment of his translation. Wing-tip a wild
gander, and what man-baby can pick him up? Then for endurance,
patience, steadiness of nerve, a good eye, and a well
disciplined heart;—no modification of saltpetre can manufacture
them. No; we do not believe that true chivalry is gone.
It will live until there is not a running buck or a flying bird.
When that time arrives, the millennium will be here, and we
shall want to shoot no more.

What good reason have we to doubt that ancient chivalry
knew gunpowder, or at least, the expansive force of marine
acid, and the oxymuriate of potash, or something else that had
the true grit and stuff? Every body has heard of the “Greek
fire.” But what was it? Salmoneus, king of Elis, manufactured
such capital thunder and lightning, that Jupiter became
jealous, and cut him down with an original thunderbolt.—For
the place of his residence in the infernal regions, see Lempriere's
directory.—Roger Bacon, in his treatise, “de secretis

operibus artis et naturæ et de nullitate,” speaks of the facility
of making thunder and coruscations in the air, and the ease of
taking cities thereby. He thinks that Gideon defeated the
Midianites, by a similar device.—See Judges, chapter vii.—
Polydore Virgil refers the detection of the grace of the subtle
mixture to a 'chemist, who accidentally put some of the sublime
composition into a mortar and covering it with a stone,
was thereby blown into the upper air, and on his dying descent,
bequeathed the mysterious cause of his exaltation to his
head apprentice. Some attribute the discovery to a monk of
Fribourgh. Others say that Swartz was the original patentee,
and that he sold his copy-right to the Venetians in 1340,
which,—it being war-time—made all Italy cry out against the
monstrous innovation as not fair-play. Another author says
it was used by the Moors in 1343, when besieged by Alphonso,
king of Castile. The bishop of Leon gives an account of
a sea-fight between the kings of Tunis and Seville, in which
those of Tunis, “threw out of certain tubes, thunderbolts of
iron.” We believe, earnestly, that the genuine old sporting
men knew the virtue of powder and shot, but kept it private.
Witness the cunning, lurking, alternative of “other pastimes
of the field” slyly hinted at, for those who knew, in the
“Basilikon Doron,” of the learned king James. Here are his
own words;

Those were times, however, when only monopolists shot.
Westley Richards could not have sold a gun to a man. His
trade would have been confined to paper-title-gentlemen; and
he would have been compelled to contract “by His Majesty's

authority.” Those were times, when our fathers,—pure-born
—freely-hating—proud—submitted to slavery, because not
shut out from hope; looking to the New America as the Canaan
of their liberty, where they might dare to keep their own
fire-arms, and shoot without fear of encroachment upon the
special monopolies of the Norman Game Law.[5] Thank God!
we have equal rights, in matters of venation, here. No punyfaced
spawn of a title, King or Queen, Duke or Squire, shall
tread down our grain, or riot in our meadows, by virtue of a
ribbon. We are all noblemen in Columbia, and he is the King
who is most eloquent to a bevy of quail getting up,—talking
with both barrels in quick succession. Our game laws go for
the protection of game, not for the benefit of corporations, individual
or collective. Every farmer is master, owner and
Sovereign of his own ground. No idle jackass, that is privileged
by law to wear a herald's device, at a Queen's coronation,
can send his game-keeper into our quiet woodland, to
kill birds for him, while he lies by, and luxuriates, and prepares
his oath as to the contents of his game bag. Alas! for
the slavery of the Welsh and Cornish;—shall we say, for
every county in Old England,—from which the people have
not had knowledge or power to come out Puritan;—but whose
language is a scoff, and whose daughters are a tribute to the
protection of Lord Melbourne!

We are off the road. Pull to the right.

Ten thousand blessings upon our republican institutions.
The question is not, “At whose preserve shall we stand envious
wishers?” but, “Boys, where shall we go?” Shall
Nova Cesarea, or Matowacs, ring with funeral vollies, over

our ruffed grouse; or shall we sacrifice Guilford quail upon
the dangerously won graves of Goffe and Whalley, prayed
against in the British Episcopal prayer-book, as murderers of
Charles the first,—sweet saint!

Non sum qualis eram, we can all, nevertheless, say, in a
plural sense. The shooting is not as it has been. We must
fulfil our true duties of observance of the game-laws, enacted
for the benefit of all, or else be content, by and by, with the
pulling at tossed pennies, or turkeys tied up. Who would not
have rejoiced to have shot and died two hundred years ago,
if he could have been on the stand of John Megapolensis, junior,
minister, who testifies after this wise, in a letter copied
into Hackleyt's State papers, translated from the original and
beautiful Dutch?

That thought is almost too much to think. Sweet is thy
memory dear Mr. Megapolensis! If it was given to you to
paint Heaven half so well as you adorned Earth, there could
not have been an unconverted sinner in the whole valley of the
Mohawk!

We have killed wild geese in our time; and we know what

it is to bring down a glorious gaggle of honkers to our stool.
We have seen their sinewy wedge splitting the wind, as they
rushed to their illimitable and unknown domains at the North,
matched, married, and fierce for the indulgence of safe love,
where no poaching, egg-hunter knows to tread; yet half lingering,
wondering, doubting, pitying, willing to wait for the
wooden devices which we have anchored in the shallow feeding-grounds,
as a picture-gallery of their uncles, cousins, and
sweet-hearts.

Hawnk! Hawnk! we have roared out, and tore our gasping
throat, and low in our skulking boat, or close in our floating
battery, have we fallen, when the music of the flying march
of the anseric host thrilled upon our ear. Hawnk! Hawnk!
They come, they tear the yielding air, with pennon fierce and
strong; on clouds they leap, from deep to deep, the vaulted
air along—tear—air—strong—along—break forth my soul into
a song!—

3. NO. III.
A FIT, BROUGHT ON BY LOOKING AT A PICTURE;
SUFFERED BY J. CYPRESS Jr.

White, in his “Natural History of Selbourne,” calls the
Woodcock “Scolopax,” simply. Latham dubs him “Scolopax
Rusticola.” Wilson christens him “Scolopax Minor.”
This is, probably, the true patronymic of the American bird,
as he is a “minor,”—a smaller animal than that described by
the ornithologists of the old world. If you go to Delmonico's,
to eat out of season, you will ask for “la Becasse,” and
be mistaken for a Frenchman, and get a private room, and so,
perhaps, avoid detection. Sportsmen, generally, among
themselves, talk of killing “cock;” but if they meet an old
woman in the woods, and want information where to beat,
they ask her if she “has seen any blind snipes.” A straggling
boy will pocket your sixpence, and send you up a rugged
mountain, on whose either side he will assure you there
are “plenty of wood-cocks,” and you will go and find, after a
weary travel, that you have had your tramp after red-headed
wood-peckers.

Seeing, therefore, that the nomenclature is uncertain, and
sometimes undignified, reducing a much valued visitor to the
caste of a common dunghill chanticleer; and, moreover, as
this is the age of reform of unworthy names, we propose to
introduce to our readers the excellent subject of this article
by his true title of “Scolopax minor.” Let him have honor
and welcome under that designation. He is cousin germain

to “Scolopax Gallinago,,”—commonly called the “English”
snipe,—undeservedly, too,—for he is a native-born “Alleghanian,”—and
feeds on similar food,—though he uses less salt
than his aforesaid relative,—and speaks the same language
differing only a little, in dialect. Listen to the one in latter
August, in the corn fields, and to the other in decaying
Autumn, on his boggy meadows, and you will hear them speak
their true name, when you flush them. Only Sc. minor is
fainter in his utterance, and in breeding season, and in the
woods, utters other voices. But both have undoubtedly, derived
their family name from their cry,—their Scolopaxian
“good bye,” “I'm off.” Anatomize the word, and take
out the vowels, which, when a bird is in a hurry, he cannot
be expected to have time to put in. Try it. Sclpx! The
trail is out, but is not the body of the sound perfect?

We like the whole tribe of bipeds belonging to this ordo,
whether allied to the genus of long-billed Curlew, Heron,
Sandpiper, or any other created or manufactured species.
They are the only people who come to us with long bills,
whom we are particularly anxious to see. If any boy of theirs
comes to us and says, “here is your bill, Sir,”—kick him
out?—we do not. We are more likely to be kicked in our
own shoulder by the reaction of the hearty greeting with
which we welcome him. We make a point—if we are on
the upland, our dog does too,—to return the heaviest compliments
for the presentation, so that we sometimes overwhelm
our visitor with confusion and faintness, by the warmth and
pressure of our reception.

But as we have a right to pick our friends, so we have to
pick our birds;—our enemy would say—the first to the
pocket, the last to the bone. We would take issue on that
allegation, and set the case down for hearing, in Chancery,

upon pleadings and proofs,—to be heard in 1841, and decided
in 1857. Decision doubtful. The distributor of justice might
have had a good pick at his dinner, or he might have a bad
pique against the complaining or defending sinner, and the
cause would have to run the gauntlet. Trust to luck. Luck
sometimes operates like a powerful argument. Kaimes over-looked
it in his book on Rhetoric. So did Blair. Collins
says nothing about it in his Ode on the passions. Maltheus
had a glimpse of the truth, but he was afraid to tell fully his
imperfect vision. His apocalypse is not revealed. Wait.
Meantime, we will pick Master Scolopax out from the company
of all the long-bills, and deliver him to sacrificial fire.

Mark! there's a bird! While we were rambling on, you,
dear reader, unconsciously and harmlessly—for he has no
fangs—trod upon a black snake; and we flushed a quail;
but October 25th was not yet, and he was safe. There, now,
is a cock—a woodcock,—Scolopax minor. See how splendidly,
cautiously, patronizingly, hungrily, Jim Crow stands!
Splendidly,—for the reputation of his own nose and figure;
cautiously,—for his master's chance to see the bird rise;
patronizingly,—for the benefit of the unhappy victim, [even
as a carpenter landlord smiles upon a widow tenant of a single
room in his miserable structure, called a house, in the
eighth ward, paying weekly in advance one quarter of the value
of the whole tenement, when he distrains and sells the portrait
of her husband, and her last silver spoon, for the rent not yet
earned]; hungrily,—not with selfish, animal appetite—for a
good dog eats no birds—but with generous consideration for
your own teeth, after his careful lips have tasted the taste of
the feathers, which his full-crowded mouth will soon bring to
you unruffled.

That suggestion is for your imagination's sake, dear pupil;

but you may make it fact if you can spare a thousand dollars,
and buy Jim. In the engraving antecedent, which we had
rather illustrate with powder and shot and wet boots, than
with pen and ink, is exhibited a variation of the exciting toil.

Scolopax is there heaven-bound. Doubly so; for there is
a messenger after him to bring him to—by him—an undesired
Paradise. He, may, unless he can fly faster than the
leaden missive which you see preparing to pursue him, suck
his julep by night-fall in another elysium than his own
sheltered wood-lake. The setters seem to be at fault, and
have, probably, flushed the fugitive. The distance, however,
is short, the sight is unobstructed, and the bird is doomed to
a deliberate death. Ye, who have not known the beatitude
of Scolopaxian collineation, look on with wonder and mute
admiration!

There are some unlucky people, who have never enjoyed
the acquaintance of Sc. minor. To them we say, cut him
not, unless with a delicate knife after he has been embalmed
upon a bed of toasted milk-biscuit, with his head resting upon
a minute slice of Floridan orange. He belongs to the best
society, and is worthy of your recognition. The books of
ornithological heraldry give him emblazonment. Take Wilson
for the authority of your introduction, and learn to know
him well. Read this advertisement of his quality, and mistake
him not:

Why every feather of his head is counted and labelled.
Such is the honorable estimation in which Master Scolopax
hath been held among the aristocracy of ornithologists.

Sc. minor is a sort of citizen, although he only rusticates
and squats among our cedars, or in our deep swamps, as in a
summer country-seat. He could bring an action of trespass
and recover damages, for his frequent dispossession, if he
could only persuade the sheriff to summon a jury “de medietate
linguœ.” But that mercy is abolished by the Revised
Statutes, and he has to take his chance of escape from “forcible
entry and detainer,” with the rest of the unfortunate proprietors
who hold under doubtful titles. He arrives here from
the South during the month of February, or just so soon as
the thawing mud-puddles will yield to his hungry mandible,
and permit him to bore for the delicate larvæ beginning to
wake up from their winter's sleep. Love, nidification, and
good eating, are then his chief employment. At morning and
evening twilight he amuses himself with a spiral flutteration
above the tree-tops, murmuring an epithalamic song which
none but a snipe could compose,—“dulce modulamine mulcet,”—while
she, his mate, below, nourishes in the rude
oak-leaf nest, the young victims whom both parents so sedulously
prepare for your killing in next July. Fatal first! how
the weak-winged chickens tumble! The survivors, in the
succeeding month, seek securer and cooler waters further

North. Approaching winter brings them back in clusters.
Then resound the woods with echoing volleys. October
heaps up slaughtered hecatombs. Alas? for the love of
blood! The month has come, and our Westley Richards is
ready!

We are almost too sentimental to be a good shot. Doubtless,
the fear of guiltiness of volucricide may account for many,
otherwise unpardonable, misses we have committed, when we
have nearly trod upon a bevy of quail; or when a sudden
partridge whirred like lightning over a neighboring thicket,
and our fluttering forefinger scattered too long lingering missives
among the innocent bushes. On the whole, although a
man must do his duty, “painful as it is,”—as a Judge would
say to a felon whom he is going to sentence to death,—yet it
would be better for a collineomaniac to think, now and then,
of the desolation he is bringing down upon happy nests; of
how many little broods he may cause to starve; of how many
robbed mates he will send, nubivagant, whistling and singing
tremulous love notes through the air, vainly searching and
calling for their lost spouses, never, never to return! To do
so, would have a powerful moral effect upon every sportsman.
It would increase the size of his organ of veneration, and diminish
the detestable bumps of destructiveness and acquisitiveness.
He would not kill more than were needful for his
family, a few immediate friends, and his own honor. He
would also augment his organ of pity in two ways; First, by
his forbearance, and regret for those doomed birds whom he
cannot help cut down; and, secondly, by his consideration
for other murderers who are to come after him next day, and
who, like him, have wives or sweethearts, and pride. In this
latter view of the matter, he would learn another noble lesson.
Pity is not only “akin to love,” but its sister or brother.—The

sex, here, is probably masculine.—He would learn to “love
his neighbor as himself;” and not, like a grasping glutton, bag
all. By all our hopes! we hold that villain a dangerous citizen,
who heaps up mounds of unnecessary carcases, and brags
of the numbers he has slaughtered. We distrust his honesty,
and think of the potency of silver shot put into the hands of
country boys who watch by dusk at ponds. He would shoot
at a covey of partridges skulking by the side of an old log,
upon the ground! He is a cockney, and no true sportsman,
and should be condemned to set snares and shoot for market.

We are thinking now of the breeders and whistlers of our
own fields and woods; not of the travelling passengers who
merely dip into our waters, and marshes, on their way to the
northern springs, and on their return to tropical bayous and
hammocks, and who are cosmopolites, and no fellow-countrymen.
They are strangers and may be taken in. Shoot and
kill. Yet even for some of these we plead. Break not up
the feeding places of the Brant, nor dig a hole near the sanding
spot of the goose. Let them have some quiet water-lot,
free from taxes, where they may repose after a weary flight,
and do not rout them from every broad shallow and hidden
nook. If the passion for collineation rages, insatiable, get
Raynor Rock, or one of his boys, to row you out into the
breakers, and bang away at Scoter, Surf, and Velvet ducks,
whom Long Island baymen, unlawfully, call “Coot.” “Number
2,” and heavy loads, and a whiffing skiff, will soon lame
your shoulder, and gratity your ambition.

A sportsman is not proven by the numbers he produces, but
by the telling of his shots, and by his time. No true gentleman
ought to labor on the uplands, soaking his fustian with
day-light dew, and dragging weary legs through twilight mud.
There might be an honest match made, we admit, touching

the number of Cock on a given day. But the event would
depend not only upon the skill, coolness, and good dog of the
performer, but upon the length and strength of legs, and all the
ordinary capacities of a foot-racer. He who walks three
miles, and kills eighteen birds out of twenty, in four hours,
and comes home before noon, is entitled to the palm in preference
to the painful toiler, who tramps all day and blunders
down fifty wingtips, missing at every other shot.

Nevertheless, we have been in the solemn woods all day,
and have dallied with solitary nature, until dusky evening
whispered in our ear, to skip and jump down the rough oxcart
precipices, called roads, and when sombre clouds and interwoven
branches of tall trees shut out even the light of the
flashing torch of the lightning, except when once it shivered,
ten yards before us, an enormous oak, to whose hypocritical
welcome of towery leaves we were hastening for protection
from the beginning hail storm, and when the thunderbolt that
burst upon the stricken giant, stunned our fearful ears, and
threw us trembling back upon a sharp rock which quivered in
its tottering tenancy of the edge of a deep ravine, and then
plunged down the precipice, leaving us clinging and climbing
with desperate strength upon the uncertain sand and crumbling
clay. Bear witness, ye mountains of Haverstraw! Did not
the storm scream, and the trees groan, and the cataracts of
mixed hail-stones and torrent rain-water sweep down the hill
side? Did we not imbibe a hot brandy sling when we arrived
at Job's, and put on a dry shirt and go to bed?—But,
were we beating for birds all day? No, no. Eleven o'clock,
A. M., found us, not weary but languid, by a leaping stream,
clear and pure as our Mary's eyes, and of a similar color; and
we took out our smitten prey, and smoothed their feathers
down, and arranged them in a row, and looked at them, and

[ILLUSTRATION]

WILD DUCK SHOOTING.

thought of death and graves, and then we dipped into the musical
water and lipped Castalian glories, and laved our hot
brow, and then fell into a cool resting-place upon some short
sweet grass by the side of a hazel bush, and took from our
pocket Thompson's “Seasons,” and read, and fell asleep,
dreaming of the beautiful Musidora. Musidora cost us a wet
jacket, and a heavy cold. Nothing but thunder could have
awakened us from that dream.

We seem to hear even now the murmuration of that rivulet,
and a woodcock getting up by its side. We are off. Reader,
farewell.

4. NO. IV.
DUCK SHOOTING.

We wonder if the Poet ever got any answer to that question.
We will bet a bag of buckshot, that the water-fowl to
whom the interesting interrogatory was addressed, was out of
sight, and out of the sound of its echo, before the spoken sentimentality
ran up against a mark of interrogation. “Whither,”
aye, “whither” should a duck go, in the age of percussion
caps, batteries, and patent cartridges? Under what upper
cloud may “the fowler's eye” mark in “distant flight,” his

“figure floating,” “vainly,” or without power to do him “wrong,”
or his fowler self, justice? The bird, which the bard apotheosised,
must have been either close by, or afar off. If he
was near, he could have been talked to, or shot at, according
to the taste of the spectator, and there would then have been
no gammon about “vainly the fowler's eye.” If he was too
far off, and only “painted on the crimson sky,” then neither
goose-shot nor poetical questions could have touched a feather
on his ear.

Let us pray to be forgiven by all just admirers of the
thoughtful music from which we have adopted the entablature
of our present madness, if we have seemed to borrow.—God
save the word! when could we repay!—steal—look at—
with any sort of levity,—the choice-culled flowers of phrase
that sculpture those sweet dreamings of Bryant. They are
mournful philosophy, reasoning grief, imagination with feet.—
Sense, heart, mind, flight. That brings us to the subject of
ducks.

Talk of “flights,” and you will remember straightway old
Drayton;—

Permit us, dear reader, to call your attention, for a few moments,
to the flight of the mallard, or shoveller—which, we
know not—in the precedent picture. If thou art blind, yet
hast shot heretofore, know that the engraving exhibits, water,
sky, bushes, hassocks, two ducks in trouble, a boat, one man
with a setting pole, and another with a gun, in the bow. If
thou BE blind, thou hast not lost much, for we do not hold the
picture dearly. Two very-gentle-men have come out, at three
hours after sunrise, to shove for crippled birds of any nation
or species, black or white, infidel or christian, grasseater or

crabcannibal. They are of the class of people who take their
comfort while they shoot. Their clothes are accurate and
comely fits. The gentleman with the pole, shoves with his
coat on, buttoned up. Doubtless, they will knock over the
invalid who flutters in the rear. It will be a merciful certainty,
if the shooter stands firm, and holds right. The
wounded one winnows the air weakly. Those birds had
flown to the up-gushing fountains of the fresh meadows, and
the healing creek-greens, to cure their stricken pinions, and
sides sore with lead spent to sting them, in the lower bays;—
not killed, but feverish after a hard experimental blow, struck by
some patient point-shooter, who had begun to be tired of waiting
for a company to wheel up nearer to his stool. That
wooden parallelogram, called a scow, chiefest for a trout-pond
cannot accomplish an original death;—unless a spring of teal,
or a river broadhill, lie in close security behind some straggling
patch of rushes, in the direct track of the intended water
road. Yet let us not do injustice to the pretty picture. It
shows, how, in a quiet way, a lover of pure air and kaleidiscopical
colors, may float down an ebbing stream, through
channel-enclosing bushes, and sedges trespassing upon the
ancient but diminishing dominion of the river gods, and suddenly
startle from his falsely imagined safety, some unfortunate
speculator in water-weeds, who thought his weak or
shattered fortune would be made sound and fat by “going in.”
One of these ducks is clearly “lame.” The other looks as
though he was taking the benefit of the wild-fowl absent
debtor act.—[That act differs from the enactment of the human
New York Legislature, in one peculiar respect. In the one
case, if the fowl owes you any feathers, or flesh, and can get
out of your jurisdiction—or rather Collineodiction—he is safe;
and may grant, bargain, sell, devise, bequeath, and run away
from, all and singular his right, title, principal and interest in
and to, and so forth, his temporary home and feeding spots.
In the other case, the Sheriff is apt to form a strong attachment
for the feeding places and singular chattels of the abscondant,
and hold on to them, against his assignee, with a
love “passing the love of women.”]—The gentlemen have
made a call upon him: but he is “out,”—out of reach.
Whither is thy flight, good fowl? Of what shell-bank wert thou
cashier? “Whither, midst falling due” notes, of which—
knowing thy business place, and full of trust,—we thought
we held the substance?—Thou art lost, gone, etherealized
silvered over with a cloudy dinner set, and wilt set thy table
in other waters!

How crippled fowl will Biddleize and Swartwoutize, and
make the fowlers who are after them d—n their eyes!

No matter. There are ducks enough left, not so flighty, and
with whom we can, easier, talk, in plain sight. Who doubts
the assertion? If it be he who goes to Audubon's exhibition,
and judges from that heterogeneous mixture of fish, flesh, and
Indian sculls, what the glorious bays of Matowacs[6] can produce,
in this present, existing November, of Anseric and
Anatic providence; or he who tries to assimilate or to reconcile
the classifications of the proudest ornitholigical grammarians—Latham—Buffon—Bewick—Wilson—Audubon—

and all the rest,—into any sort of society, of which the members
may be identified by some possible nomenclature without
an alias, or without a doubt expressed as to their family
title;—men that call the American gander “Anas Canadiensis,”
instead of “Anser,” forgetting those Roman “hawnkers,”
worthy of a classic name, who saved the empire treasury from
the rapacious Gauls;—then, we pray thee, friend come with
us, and look at the streaming squadrons, crucking, quacking,
whistling and perutting in the Great South bay of Long Island.
The most accurate images,—and those of Audubon—
bird Prometheus—almost live, are faint copies of the rushing
glories of the bay. No one can paint like Goddess Nature.
Break thy pallet, tear thy canvas, thou mortal who dare presume.

Knowest thou Jim Smith?—James X. Smith,—called by
judicious distinction from some rascals, who, by paternal authority,
have stolen his name, James Xenophon Smith?—Illustrious
cognomen!—worthily won; as every angler well appreciates,
who has perused the map of his “Anabasis” to
Steph. Sweesy's pond, and has moralized over the stumps where

Jim and we once pitched our tents, long, long before “Yorkers”
found out that trout floated there, and before Jim X. had
learned that he could make moneys out of frail travelling nature,
by building a good ice-house near “The Sportsman's
Hotel.” James X. Smith's biography is yet to be written!
He lives now, and we introduce him briefly. Ample provision
will, unquestionably, be made in his will, for his eulogist.
We name James X. as being the fortunate proprietor of one
of the chiefly selected stopping haunts, and sallying ports, of
all shooting visitors of Matowacs. You cannot mistake his
house, if you hold up at the sign-post at the corner of Jerusalem
lane and South turnpike. It is a pious neighborhood.
The name gives you a confidence in that truth. Babylon,
the mother of miscellaneous people, is nine miles farther
east.

But what changing panoramas of vocal regiments of air-climbers
will you not see shifting, with their living paintings,
all singing in their own particular crotchets, when you go out,
in the early morning, striking the sleeping inlets with your
oar, before the sun has waked up! Will you look into Wilson
for an enumeration, or gloat over Audubon? Yet neither
they, nor Bonaparte, have told the names—for they never
had their acquaintance,—of all their familiar varieties. Probably
the families have intermarried and crossed the breed,
since those authors wrote, and new baptisms are to be
sprinkled. Wilson was certainly never on Matowacs. He
shot his own acquired specimens, at Egg Harbor and Cape
May. The rest were sent to him, with an eel-spears-man's
description, which he translated.

We are not learned, nor critical, which latter we might be
without being instructed; but every bayman on Long Island,
to whom you would read the ill-arranged ordines, genera, and

species of Wilson, translating the latin to him, and putting it into
honest South-side dialect, would say “Pshaw! he hasn't got
down one half the different kinds of broadbill,—let alone other
salt-water birds who hold their public meetings on our
marshes!” But even in Wilson, you find twenty-odd enumerations
of feather-floaters, who either strut by their own
domiciles, or occasionally, call in at the Squaw Islands, Linus
Island or Wanzas flat, and are ready for the reception of visitors,
who come in the shape of Youle's No. 3.

Let us take a skiff and put out and bless the abundance.

It is three o'clock, A. M. If thou art cold, and, last night,
slept too little—for reasons, which as a dear friend, loving
thy usual abstinence, and chastising thee by silence, rather
than by unnecessary recapitulation, we forbear to hint at, lie
down in the bottom of the boat, in the dry salt-meadow grass
which thy man will fix for thee, with thy head upon an air
cushion resting upon the bow-head, and sleep. Sleep! when
birds are swimming in the skiff's pathway, and ducks quack,
and brant cronk, and broadbill prut about thee? No; thy poler
or oarsman, even if he had not read Shakespeare, would soon
cry out “Sleep no more,”—or else, “Mister, I reckon there's
fowl ahead—close by—take them as they rise.”

Such a heart-stirrer and ambition-provoker, puts you on
your knees, and you will try to see through the dark. How
queer! we bend our bodies upon our knees when we pray to
be saved; and yet we often kneel, in the same way, to destroy
ducks! When are our prayers most earnest?—Don't
think of it. Knees have dangerous associating reflections.

But you will by-and-by arrive at some jutting point, or
thatchy island, where you may lie securely hid, wrapped up
in the warm envelopments of sedge-grass and your overall,
and wait for the peeping daylight to set the various tribes of

ducks to their works of travel and diving. Happy wretches!
who have nothing to do but to fly, and to feed, and be loved,
and shot,—killed without notice, without lingering sickness,
or surgical torment. Yet they, many of them, have their ails
and aches; and the inexperienced amateur, shooting when
they fly in his eyes, and the old leather-head batterer straining
a broken musket at a distance immeasurable but by a fowl,
has planted many a shot-wound needlessly, by accident, in the
side of a straggler, or luck-loser of the flock.

But thou art at thy hiding-place now, and thy poler—polar
star of thy existence, if thou knowest not the road, and how
to pull, and he fall overboard,—is setting out his stools.

If thou be inexperienced, thou mayest look into all the dictionaries
that have ever been collated, and we hold the last—
Richardson's, the poorest, and a great humbug, yet it comes
nearer to our taste in its illustration of this word—and thou
wilt not learn what the sporting meaning of “stool,” is. To
save the trouble of distant reference and inquiry, we will therefore
certify and explain that “stools,” in shooting phraseology,
are graven images made in the likeness of geese, brant, and
ducks, before which the hassock-skulking adventurer bows
down and worships—not the graven images—but the providence
that permits the living squadrons at whom he shoots, to
be cheated by the false colors which he has hung out, to persuade
them to come in. How many—many—honorable villains,
might be indicted for obtaining ducks under “false pretences.”
The district attorney of Queen's might soon make
his fortune, if he would only do his duty. Stools, to talk plain
American, are wooden devices of the shape, size, and complexion
of the fowl you wish to subduce from the upper air.
Sculptor and painter are employed in their manufacture. Jim
X. Smith's boys unite and body forth the sister arts. Let

them set out a congregation of stool for thee, and thou wilt for
ten minutes cry out “there's a bird,” fast as guns can be reloaded,
and shoot every stool to pieces. The old man, himself,
was not slow at sculpture. We remember one April day
—it was the first, and the old man wanted his revenge on us
for some innocent devil-play—when lying in Goose-Creek,
after sheldrakes, Jim suddenly got up, and wrapping his pea-coat
around him, stepped from the boat to the marsh, and said,
“he believed he'd take a walk, and see if there wasn't any
black ducks sitting in that pond down there,”—somewhere.
He went. After a quarter of an hour's travel he returned, and
with all the solemnity of a regular cheater, observed that “he
reckoned he see a crippled faawl sittin down on the edge of
that are pint.” “I'll go after him,” exclaimed our companion,
who had in the mean time, with poor luck like our own, called
to give us a visit of condolence, in another skiff. “No, no;”
cried the excellent Jim X., “I want that fowl in our boat. I
found him first, and Mr. Cypress is entitled to the shot. You
can come along, and if he misses, you can kill after him.”
And so we went—slop, sink, stick, jump, through and over a
wet, soft meadow. At last we heard the welcome intelligence,
—“Stop, Mr. Cypress, there he is: don't you see him?—just
a leetle north-east of that bunch of bushes on the edge of the
bank?” We looked: there he was.

“Jim, that's a dead bird. He can't rise.”

“Yes he can; and if you don't shoot it sittin, he'll tumble
off into the water, and dive, and there'll be an end of him.
Shoot, shoot, and if he rises take him with the other barrel;
stand ready, Mr. B—.”

We shot, the bird sat and grinned at us.

“You've killed him—you've killed him,” cried Jim,—
“don't shoot your other barral.”

It is no great grief to renew; but we had rather tell the
story ourselves; and it was April day, and it was James X.
So he went and picked up our game, one of his aforesaid stools,
which he had privately secreted under the folds of his great
coat, and carried out to help the solemnization of April-fool
day, in the South bay. We have not had our revenge yet.

James X. is wary, and moves out of the county on the last
day of March. But retribution is in pickle for him; and it
will be funny.

This simple incident in our biography illustrates the subject
of stools. They are miserably wooden pictures of bay
birds, whose distant view brings enchantment to the living
jaunters, when they dip in here, and who are apt to look at the
arrival-book of the public places of “entertainment for ducks,”
and stop where their friends are; and will, of course, call in
and say they're “happy to see them.” Alas! how many
credulous, ruined hearts, of human structure, have been
pierced, and stricken, bleeding, by a similar profession of
love, and good feeding-ground! The stools are anchored off,
some twenty or thirty yards, held safely by a brick or angular
stone, tied to a string attached to a nail driven in their middle,
and there they float, like independent slaves tied to their
desk or counter, bobbing up and down and looking “happy
—very happy,” but yet unable to take the wings of the morning,
or of the moonlight, and to fly away. The fresh flocks
just arriving, and not knowing where to go, following example,
as they imagine, whirl, with congratulatory clang, into
the expected welcome of their fancied neighbors, only to
be met by the rough, harsh, remorseless, bang, bang, with
which “the obtainer of ducks under false pretences,” lies
hiding to destroy them.

They used to have another device “down East,” called

“machines,” Dannel Post, Ike Rose, and the Alibi's, were,
if not the inventors, at all events, the constant practisers and
mechanists, in the time of the prevailing architecture to which
we refer. Let no man flatter himself that that order of art
is beneath his notice. The genius of the structure itself sneers
at the Corinthian, speaks with cold respect to the Doric, and
calls itself the Colline-anatic. But those old batteries are
decaying; for the Legislature has enacted a law, forbidding
worship in such temples. General Jones, of Queen's, Senator
and nobleman, noble-man as a Republican could wish to
be, takes the responsibility of the constitutionality of the
imposed penalty. Fifty dollars for every bird shot out of a
battery? All honor to him if the law can be enforced.
Whether it be a law just and sustainable upon the ground of
“equal rights,” or the “sumptuary” prerogatives of law-making
power, we have not yet made up our conclusion.
Our judgment is only doubtfully retained, having been spoken
to on both sides, without an advanced fee from either; therefore,
we decline being anxious to precipitate an opinion.

We must confess, however, that, personally, we have lain
in those coffins, not dead, nor dying, but the cause of death
in many two-legged people with feathers on. But we have
always had doubts about the morality—the mor—what?
—what is morality, as applied to ducks? A duck's safety
lies in his wings and feet, not in acts of the Legislature. He
can spring yards enough, at a single leap, to cheat his enemies;
flies two miles in a minute, to overtake his friends;
and dive, and scramble, and hide, better than the cunningest
Seminole. Yet, perhaps, our ducks need protection. Perhaps
we ought to repair our house, and make things comfortable,
or the tenants will move away. There is a great deal
in that consideration. Years ago, the southern bays of Matowacs

were brilliant with sparkling plumage, and bright eyes
of birds of every hue and shape. Now!—Look for the intended
progenitors of a “long line of descendants,” in the kitchens
of people who go to Fulton Market. The marshes which
were joyfully obstreperous, even in summer, are now silent.
The banquet halls of the feeding-flats are deserted. Instead
of taking board, or hiring a house and lot, and making themselves
comfortable, as in old times; the ducks, now, are
only travellers, who just stop and take a drink, where they see
the proper sort of bar. It is natural, and therefore excusable,
that they stop at those Hotels where they see the most people
congregated; for a congregation argues good patronage;
and good patronage argues good beverage.

This brings us back to the subject of machines. A machine,
or battery, is a wooden box of the necessary dimensions
to let a man lie down upon his back, just tightly fitting enough
to let him rise again.—It is not unlike that box which we
have all got to be shut up in, at the end of the chapter of our
lives.—It is fitted with wings of board horizontal, and so sustained
and nailed as to lie flat upon the water without sinking,
the top fringing, and the sides keeping you unwet by the
surrounding and over-floating tide, which gurgles around your
ears, and just does not come in, because the weight of stones
laid upon the wings, accurately adjusts the sinking depth of
the box. This receptacle for the body of the fowl slayer, is
anchored in some middle bay, where, in its shallow waters,
the birds have a “haunt,” and fly to feed upon the thick-growing
crops of Valisneria, and other goodly sea-wheat, far from any
point or plashy hassock, where, with their constant experience,
they might fear some skulker hid. The battery is
anchored. The wings, about five feet by seven, are covered
carefully with sand and carelessly scattered sea-leaves, and

there is thus built an artificial sand-bar in the middle of the
wide, and to the credulous victim, seemingly safe, bay. You
get into this machine, and lie down and watch. Your man disposes
the stool-birds to your leeward, and sails away to stir
up flocks miles off, and drive them towards you, leaving you
in the waste of waters, where a little leak might sink and
anchor you at the bottom,—fun for ducks to dive and flop at,
—to lie, cheat, counterfeit, and kill. That is “shooting out
of a machine.” The now arrivers coming in from sea, see
the supposed happy family you have around you, afar off, and
set their willing wings, fatigued with long exertion, and
come, crucking musical “good mornings,” among your false
masques. Then, then!—as they swoop in thick company
before they settle,—you rise from under the water, like a
sudden demon, and scatter thunder and lightning and death
among the deceived and ruined unfortunates!

Plant these machines all along the southern coast of Matowacs,
from Gowanas bay to Montauck point, and can any
man wonder that James X.—who hasn't got any proper spot
to set out a battery,—should sometimes say that “ducks is
scace?”

Mercy on us; we came near expressing an opinion! But
we are not committed. And lo! we have prosed a long half
hour, almost, and have not said a word we intended to. Dear
reader, we will usurp no more. Talk, now, thyself.