A YANKEE MARKSMAN.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 578, 26 April 1876, Page 3

A YANKEE MARKSMAN.

[Richmond Whig.'] An elderly man named Beckwith, residing in one of the Peninsular counties of Virginia, recently came to Richmond on business. He brought with him an old-fashioned flint-lock rifle to have a stock and lock put on. On the cars he fell into conversation with a party of three gentlemen from Richmond, when one of them, to test the reality of some of the extraordinary feats of markmanship he boasted of, offered him 10 dels to repeat some of them, to which the other two added 5 dofs between them. The trial came off in a field, half a mile below Rocketts, and was witnessed by about a dozen persons. The old flint-lock was fired seven times, and only once misst d its aim. The old gentleman, after making shots at small objects to one side, to get his hands steady, as he said, handed his son a potato, and stationed him at fifty yards distance, holding the potato between his thumb and forefinger. The rifle cracked, and the potato fell cloven in three or four pieces. One of the larger pieces was then thrown in the air, the marksman keeping at the same distance, and again the shot told. An inch and a half augur was then produced, and a hole bored in the fence, behind which was fastened a piece of white paper. At a distance of sixty yards the marksman sent a ball clean through the aperture, piercing the piper. At the fourth shot, from sixty yards distance, the bowl of a pipe, which the son was smoking, was crushed. At the fifth shot a copper cent was thrown into the air and hit. The sixth and seventh shots were delivered at a blackened five cent nickel piece thrown up by the son, standing about SO. yards off. At the first attempt the shot missed. The old gentleman showed considerable mortification, and laid the blame upon a bystander, who at the critical moment sneezed loudly. The next attempt, however, was an entire success. The old man declined any further trials of his skill, and when offered a sum of money to repeat his first feat of shooting a potato from his son’s hand, he refused, saying he didn’t care to try such experiments unless his weapon was freshly cleaned. The exhibition was the more remarkable from the fact that the marksman was an old man, at least fifty. His eye, however, is a clear bright gray, his appearance that of a poor farmer. The young man showed not the least tremor or anxiety during the dangerous experiment upon himself. The old man, referring to his son, said, ‘ Bob can shoot just as well as I can. ’