n of firing is
greater, the bodily shock is abrupt and jarring, you have no real chance
to make up for a miss by later brilliance or by any luck. No, golf
teaches patience and it requires poise, but--as played by the ordinary
man--it is no such game as this.

And as between the experts, target shooting is still the bigger sport.
The knowledge and judgment required to meet the varying conditions, the
steadiness demanded, the fact that the rifleman is preparing himself to
meet his country's greatest emergencies--these put golf (and you know I
have loved the game) into the lower place.

I put on my greatcoat again, took the nap that longed to be taken, and
then, refreshed and more confident, went to my next turn.

This was at five hundred yards. If you will consider that I was shooting
from our house across the meadow, across the railroad bridge, at a circle
twenty inches in diameter (about the size of our largest pewter platter)
you will understand my task. But I was fussed to begin with, for someone
had taken my rifle from the rack, and I had therefore not blacked the
sights, nor adjusted the sling, of the one that I hastily borrowed. As I
came to the stand I was met by an artillery corporal, evidently a kind of
super-coach, who curtly ordered me to do the one thing and the other, and
hurried me to my place. I told him how the captain had wanted the sights
set for this distance; I had put them so. "That doesn't go here," he
said, readjusted them himself, and ordered me to lie down. He was so
overbearing, and I was so uncertain of my rights, that I took my position
and fired my shot. A miss! He blamed me severely, and in general treated
me like the dirt under my feet. At my next shot, a poor two, he said,
"There you go, thinking you know all about it, and jerking your trigger
again." I said, "On the contrary, I'm not used to the pull of this
trigger, and the gun went off before I expected." From that time on I
paid no more attention to him, and perhaps from my manner he saw that it
was just as well to let me alone; but he attacked the other man on this
target, who feebly protested, and who made a wretched score. My score was
coaxed along by our company coach, a nice chap named Haynes, who was most
interested and sympathetic. As for me, the artilleryman vexed me so that
I shot to kill _him_, and by imagining him at the target made a
thirty-six.

It was an entirely new sensation, to be so bedevilled by such a man, and
t