de, so that one of the jour printers said it was a
first-rate gun to shoot round a corner with. Then he made himself a
powder-flask out of an ox-horn that he got and boiled till it was soft
(it smelt the whole house up), and then scraped thin with a piece of
glass; it hung at his side; and he carried his shot in his pantaloons
pocket. He went hunting with this gun for a good many years, but he had
never shot anything with it, when his uncle gave him a smooth-bore
rifle, and he in turn gave his gun to my boy, who must then have been
nearly ten years old.

It seemed to him that he was quite old enough to have a gun; but he was
mortified the very next morning after he got it by a citizen who thought
differently. He had risen at daybreak to go out and shoot kildees on the
Common, and he was hurrying along with his gun on his shoulder when the
citizen stopped him and asked him what he was going to do with that gun.
He said to shoot kildees, and he added that it was his gun. This seemed
to surprise the citizen even more than the boy could have wished. He
asked him if he did not think he was a pretty small boy to have a gun;
and he took the gun from him, and examined it thoughtfully, and then
handed it back to the boy, who felt himself getting smaller all the
time. The man went his way without saying anything more, but his
behavior was somehow so sarcastic that the boy had no pleasure in his
sport that morning; partly, perhaps, because he found no kildees to
shoot at on the Common. He only fired off his gun once or twice at a
fence, and then he sneaked home with it through alleys and by-ways, and
whenever he met a person he hurried by for fear the person would find
him too small to have a gun.

Afterward he came to have a bolder spirit about it, and he went hunting
with it a good deal. It was a very curious kind of gun; you had to snap
a good many caps on it, sometimes, before the load would go off; and
sometimes it would hang fire, and then seem to recollect itself, and go
off, maybe, just when you were going to take it down from your shoulder.
The barrel was so crooked that it could not shoot straight, but this was
not the only reason why the boy never hit anything with it. He could not
shut his left eye and keep his right eye open; so he had to take aim
with both eyes, or else with the left eye, which was worse yet, till one
day when he was playing shinny (or hockey) at school, and got a blow
over his left eye from a shinn