HINTS TO SPORTSMEN.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4731, 6 March 1884, Page 3

HINTS TO SPORTSMEN.

Some remarks on the subject of lending, guns, written by Mr F. M. Gilbert, an American journalist, who is evidently a good sportsman, are well worth quoting, not only on account of their humor, but as containing much shrewd common sense. Mr Gilbert does not mind lending men dollars—he likes it; but he objects to lending Runs. " You lend a man a dollar and he can knock around with it all he wants to, and it don't hurt it. He can't let it fali over a log or on a rail-fence and dent in the barrels.* He can't get mud in the muzzle and all over the fancy-work in the stock, and, if he lets it lie a week without cleaning, it don't hurt. He can't take it and try to force shells a size too large into the breech, and then try to close it by main force and awkwardness. He can't try the locks 30 times a day to see if they work well and hear how loud they snap, and ho can't get tired and lie down under a tree and give the dollar to some granger who never saw a breechloader, and let him go shooting all over the farm with it, at marks and woodpeckers, and getting shells fast in it, and trying to dig them out with a Barlow knife. No, you can't do all these with a dollar; but you enn with a nice breeh-loader; and that's the difference. :Thi3 is why we would rather lend the dollar, and this is why.it is that, when a good friend that we would like to oblige comps in, we always look him directly in the eye and tell him that the cases he sees under the desk are empty, and that both of our guns are over in Illinois."