as possible, friend Frank, you would bring your fly-book out, when the
light comes, and tie some hackles."

"Perhaps I may, when the light comes," Forester answered; "but I'm in no
hurry for it; I like of all things to look out, and watch the changes of
the night over a landscape even less beautiful than this. One-half the
pleasures of field sports to me, is other than the mere excitement. If
there were nothing but the eagerness of the pursuit, and the
gratification of successful vanity, fond as I am of shooting, I should,
I believe, have long since wearied of it; but there are so many other
things connected with it--the wandering among the loveliest scenery--the
full enjoyment of the sweetest weather--the learning the innumerable and
all-wondrous attributes and instincts of animated nature--all these are
what make up to me the rapture I derive from woodcraft! Why, such a
scene as this--a scene which how few, save the vagrant sportsman, or the
countryman who but rarely appreciates the picturesque, have ever
witnessed--is enough, with the pure and tranquil thoughts it calls up in
the heart, to plead a trumpet-tongued apology, for all the vanity, and
uselessness, and cruelty, and what not, so constantly alleged against
our field sports."

"Oh! yes," cried Harry; "yes, indeed, Frank, I perfectly agree with you.
But all that last is mere humbug--humbug, too, of the lowest and most
foolish order--I never hear a man droning about the cruelty of field
sports, but I set him down, on the spot, either as a hypocrite or a
fool, and probably a glorious union of the two. When man can exist
without killing myriads of animals with every breath of vital air he
draws, with every draught of water he imbibes, with every footstep he
prints upon the turf or gravel of his garden--when he abstains from
every sort of animal food--and, above all, when he abstains from his
great pursuit of torturing his fellow men--then let him prate, if he
will, of sportsmen's cruelty.

"For show me one trade, one profession, wherein one man's success is not
based upon another's failure; all rivalry, all competition, triumph and
rapture to the winner, disgrace and anguish to the loser! And then these
fellows, fattened on widows' tears and orphans' misery, preach you pure
homilies about the cruelty of taking life. But you are quite right about
the combination of pleasures--the excitement, too, of quick motion
through the fresh air--the sense of liberty amid