ere delinquent subscribers, and they did it in part pay
for their papers. When they got through with it my boy's brother made
himself a ramrod out of a straight piece of hickory, or at least as
straight as the gun-barrel, which was rather sway-backed, and had a
little twist to one side, 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 smoothbore 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.

Afterwards 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 n