Catching a Cold.

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catch a rabbit with a fat house-dog we had; and on returning unsuccessful, "The rabbit," he said, "ran so fast, that Mungo had hard work to keep behind him." Poor Sam! I forget what became of him; he got into great scrapes with the authorities for incurable laziness and impertinence; but he was an enthusiastic assistant in hedge-popping. He never did anything without some expression of comic interest in the work. I remember once looking into the kitchen, and seeing Sam crouched up by the fire, his hands on his knees, mouth open, eyes half shut, and face as long as a fiddle-case. The gardener coming in at that instant, cried out,

Hollo, Sam, what are you after?' "Hush!" replied Sam, cautiously, "I'm catching a cold;" as if it were an animal behind the grate, which he expected to bolt, like a rabbit.

The shrubs at the end of the wall where the battery was masked for the jackdaws, formed an excellent practice-ground for snap-shooting in later boy years. There were always some blackbirds or thrushes in the shrubbery; but when disturbed, they never broke cover till they got to the wall, and then they popped over with a flip, and I can tell you it is no

such easy matter to catch a bird thus. Some of your pheasant-butchers would be hard put to it to knock over a blackbird in such a glimpse, but we got to be rather dabs at this quick shooting; and on the first occasion of my ever shooting at a woodcock, at my first battue, I knocked one down which was twisting about among the trees, in the presence of some eight or nine old sportsmen, with very great applause.

Woodpigeons are among the hedge-popper's head game. The best way to get them is to wait by the plantations to which they resort, and stand still till they come. But by no means shoot at one as it approaches you—the feathers of these birds are so thick upon the breast that they will often turn off the shot; wait till they have passed, and then they are vulnerable enough.

The same rule applies to wild duck, gulls, &c. Though wild-duck shooting is a high and separate art, yet the popper is in his glory on the beach, and about the saltings on the flat coast. Nowhere does he learn better to calculate distances, nowhere has he greater variety of practice, from the curlew going at full speed down a creek, to an oxbird running and then rising up just within range, and

"Oh, Billy! what have you done?" 321

needing to be knocked down in an instant, if touched at all. There is something, though, about shooting gulls against the grain. They are the marked companions of our sacred friends the rooks. With them they follow the plough, and dot the dark mould with spots of white, showing bigger than they really are by their contrast with their black companions.

But the worst feat of all is to shoot an owl: there is something ominous of evil in it. Did you ever see a wounded owl? Its look of melancholy reproach is most affecting. One does not wonder at the boy in the story, whose companion had winged an owl in a churchyard, and who ran to pick it up. "Oh, Billy," he cried out when he reached it, "what have you done? You've been and shot a cherubim ;" a great compliment to the sculptor of the tombstones he had studied.

There is one rule, too, the hedge-popper will keep sacredly he will never shoot in the breeding-times. Autumn and winter are his seasons, especially the latter, when the blackbirds are dispersed in the hedges, and the larks are not packed by too cold weather. Then even an old sportsman may find abundant occasions for exercise and skill, without

Y

breeding any of the bad blood which too often accompanies the preservation of game, and without slaughtering the numerous little birds which preserve our fields and gardens from the grub.

In revising this little paper, written some time ago, I cannot help feeling how gentle we London parsons should be with the wilder spirits among our street boys, who, too often, have apparently no vent but mischief for letting off their steam.

Half the harm they do comes from sheer energy, which wants only to be guided into useful channels.

All honour to the Founders of the Shoe Brigade! Did you ever employ one (not a founder)? The sensation is curious. He pounces on your foot, brushing your trowsers and scratching off the bigger splashes with his nails. It is like putting your toe in the way of a quarrelsome house-terrier, which makes ineffectual attempts to worry the intruder. But Blacky does his work well, though always in a desperate hurry.

35

THE STAMP OFFICE.

ELL, I am going down the Strand, so I will just run in and get it done at once."

So said I innocently of a small square of parchment which came some weeks ago by the Yorkshire post, with a request with a request from my friend C that I would get it stamped for him at Somerset House, and leave it with Messrs. Stickfast & Grabfee, the clerical lawyers in Bishop Street. It was the nomination to the incumbency of a poor district in the North, miscalled a "living" by some, but well known to others, with apt reference to the permanent labour and poverty of the place, as a "perpetual curacy." I folded it up in an envelope, and took it at three o'clock that afternoon to Somerset House. Having inquired of an omniscient policeman where stamps were to be obtained, I was guided to a doorway with "Inland Revenue" over it. over it. Passing through this, and turning sharp to the left, I found