s one, the guns
really good, the workmanship unimpeachable, and the stock to select
from immense. But let a thing be never so good, one does not care to
have it positively thrust on one.

By this time my temper was up, and I determined to go through with
the business, and get the precise article likely to please D., if I
went to every maker in the Metropolis. I went to very nearly every
prominent man--I spent several days at it. I called at shops whose
names are household words wherever an English sportsman can be
found. Some of them, though bright to look at from the pavement,
within were mean, and even lacked cleanliness. The attendants were
often incapable of comprehending that a customer _may_ be as good a
judge of what he wants as themselves; they have got into a narrow
routine of offering the same thing to everybody. No two shops were
of the same opinion: at one you were told that the choke was the
greatest success in the world; at another, that they only shot well
for one season, quickly wearing out; at a third, that such and such
a 'grip' or breech-action was perfect; at a fourth, that there never
was such a mistake; at a fifth, that hammerless guns were the guns
of the future, and elsewhere, that people detested hammerless guns
because it seemed like learning to shoot over again. Finally, I
visited several of the second-hand shops. They had some remarkably
good guns--for the leading second-hand shops do not care to buy a
gun unless by a crack maker--but the cheapness was a delusion. A new
gun might be got for the same money, or very little more. Their
system was like this. Suppose they had a really good gun, but, for
aught you could tell, twenty or thirty years old (the breech-action
might have been altered), for this they would ask, say L25. The
original price of the gun may have been L50, and if viewed _only_
with regard to the original price, of course that would be a great
reduction. But for the L25 a new gun could be got from a maker whose
goods, if not so famous, were thoroughly reliable, and who
guaranteed the shooting. In the one case you bought a gun about
whose previous history you knew absolutely nothing beyond the mere
fact of the barrels having come at first-hand from a leading maker.
But they may have been battered about--rebored; they may be scored
inside by someone loading with flints; twenty things that are quite
unascertainable may have combined to injure its original perfection.
The cheapne