out of it, and see it sail through the air; you could fill
the muzzle up with water, on top of a charge, and send the water in a
straight column at a fence. The boys all believed that you could fire
that column of water right through a man, and they always wanted to try
whether it would go through a cow, but they were afraid the owner of the
cow would find it out. There was a good deal of pleasure in cleaning
your gun when it got so foul that your ramrod stuck in it and you could
hardly get it out. You poured hot water into the muzzle and blew it
through the nipple, till it began to show clear; then you wiped it dry
with soft rags wound on your gun-screw, and then oiled it with greasy
tow. Sometimes the tow would get loose from the screw, and stay in the
barrel, and then you would have to pick enough powder in at the nipple
to blow it out. Of course I am talking of the old muzzle-loading
shot-gun, which I dare say the boys never use nowadays.

But the great pleasure of all, in hunting, was getting home tired and
footsore in the evening, and smelling the supper almost as soon as you
came in sight of the house. There was nearly always hot biscuit for
supper, with steak, and with coffee such as nobody but a boy's mother
ever knew how to make; and just as likely as not there was some kind of
preserves; at any rate, there was apple-butter. You could hardly take
the time to wash the powder-grime off your hands and face before you
rushed to the table; and if you had brought home a yellowhammer you left
it with your gun on the back porch, and perhaps the cat got it and saved
you the trouble of cleaning it. A cat can clean a bird a good deal
quicker than a boy can, and she does not hate to do it half as badly.

Next to the pleasure of getting home from hunting late was the pleasure
of starting early, as my boy and his brother sometimes did, to shoot
ducks on the Little Reservoir in the fall. His brother had an
alarm-clock, which he set at about four, and he was up the instant it
rang, and pulling my boy out of bed, where he would rather have stayed
than shot the largest mallard duck in the world. They raked the ashes
off the bed of coals in the fireplace, and while the embers ticked and
bristled, and flung out little showers of sparks, they hustled on their
clothes, and ran down the back stairs into the yard with their guns.

Tip, the dog, was already waiting for them there, for he seemed to know
they were going that morning, a