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THE THUNDER-PUMPER.

flesh was as sweet as that of a young quail, and at the same time as choice-flavored as that of the woodcock. A favorite way of shooting these birds, and geese also, with the bow, is for the archer to conceal himself at a point over which a flock will fly when disturbed, and send an assistant to go by a wide circuit round the game and drive it over. I have seen eight or ten birds taken in this way during the course of two hours' shooting. But the best sport is had by slipping along the shores of the ponds and streams and getting single shots by strategy. In the Kankakee lagoons one may shoot all day at buffle-heads, woodduck, teal, scaup-duck and mallard without getting out of sight of his camp. On the flat prairies bordering this river plover are plentiful, and no bird offers a better mark for an arrow. It is somewhat difficult to hit, but the sport is exciting on account of the fact that on the smooth, level meadow of the prairie you can mark just how near you come to killing each bird; and oftentimes a miss, when your arrow fairly lifts the back-feathers of the game or "tips" its tail or beak, gives you as much pleasure as if you had bowled it over. The peculiarly lively skip and jump taken by a plover when an arrow-head strikes into the ground beside it is enough to make any healthy man laugh in spite of himself. Of course, when shooting at game so small, you must be content to miss five times as often as you hit; indeed to kill once out of five shots would be excellent archery. I have had some days of rare sport when my score showed over forty shots to each bird I bagged.

A kind of bittern or night-heron haunts

the prairie sloughs in the Kankakee region, and often, for lack of better game, I have knocked them over for their wing-feathers, which make excellent trimmings for light arrows. The natives call these bitterns by the very appropriate if not euphonious name of "thunder-pumper."

It is rather remarkable that the archer is subjected to the criticism of everybody who sees him. A grave man, who boasted of having served many years in the Hoosier senate, once gave me a long lecture on the folly and childishness of "playing with bows 'n' arrers; " but he would sit all day beside a mill-pond, fishing for "goggle-eyes" and sun-perch, without dreaming of childishness. A Kankakee herder, with a cast of countenance decidedly hangdog, ventured to set his big cur on Will, because he went among some cattle to shoot at a prairie-hen; but a well-directed blunt shaft settled the dog, which ran yelling back to its irate master. Whenever you go into a village all the urchins will gather around you, and some one a little more ragged and bold than the others will be sure to sidle up to you and say, "Mister, make me a bow, will ye ?" as though the manufacture of an English longbow were a matter of five minutes' work!

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HAWK WATCHING FOR QUAIL

shooting and how our arrows were made, the use of our quivers, and so on, till he seemed satisfied, and stood for a moment as if plunged in deep meditation. Then he turned abruptly away and left us, muttering as he did so, "Ye couldn't gi' me a thousand o' them 'ere bows!"

Sometimes we have been followed for a half-day at a time by a staid old farmer, to watch us shoot. His delight at our success was as unbounded as his amazement was profound.

Wood-duck shooting is the bowman's richest sport, and the bird itself is the most royal of game in everything but size. The little streams of the middle and western states, especially those of Indiana and Illinois, teem with wood-duck in their season, which is from the first of September to about the tenth of November, when they fly south. These small streams mostly flow through a wooded country, between low bluffs fringed with papaw and hazel thickets, and overshadowed by giant oak and plane trees. Acorns are constantly dropping into the clear water, giving the ducks all the food they desire; but should this source chance to fail, the wheat-stacks and corn-shocks of the farmer are hard by, and to them they make daily excursions. Under cover of the bluffs or the hazel and papaw thickets, the archer has easy work approaching his birds, and generally gets within short range of them before he shoots. If you can keep the shotgunners away, three or four miles of a wellstocked stream will afford two archers plenty of sport for a whole season. Hunting them with the bow does not drive the birds off to

other haunts; but the sound of a gun soon depopulates a stream, whether any duck be killed or not. The little rivulet I am now hunting along is so shallow that I can wade it at any point, and its average width is not over fifteen yards. No gunners have been on it this season-i. e., within a mile or two of my cabin, each way. The ducks are plentifully distributed along my beat, and seem very fat. I am having grand luck.

Yesterday I found an old, dead, scraggy plane-tree, so full of knot-holes and deserted woodpecker-holes that it looked like a dry honeycomb, and it was literally crammed with flying-squirrels. I spent an hour pounding on the old shell and shooting at the little animals when they came out of the holes. Finally I fetched my stool and easel and made a rough sketch of this flying-squirrels' palace. Anything that flies, swims, climbs or runs is game for the archer. He shoots at everything from a tomtit to a hawk or an eagle, from a flying-squirrel or ground

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Never try to take aim when shooting, but fix your eyes steadily on the mark, and guide your arrow by your sense of direction.

Squeeze the bow-handle with the left hand. You cannot hold it too fast. Draw quickly and evenly. Let go without "bobbling" or

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tremor.

Do not allow the sight of game to put you all in a quiver. You cannot shoot well when excited.

I do not wish to put in a special plea for archery, but I venture to say that no man or woman who cares at all for out-door sport can resist its fascination after he has once mastered its first difficulties. I have yet to find a person so grave and dignified that archery could not coax him into a bending humor. Indeed the bow is the natural weapon of man, and it affords him the most perfect physical and mental recreative exercise that can be conceived of. It is to the mind and body what music and poetry are to the soul,-it trains them to the highest degree of healthfulness and strength.

I do not decry angling and gunning, except that the latter is too destructive of game. I am an enthusiastic "disciple of the rod," but whenever I cast a fly or troll a minnow my long-bow is near at hand, and a well-filled quiver at my side. You cannot combine gunning and angling on account of the weight of the gun and accouterments, and still more because the noise of fire-arms is sure to render timid fish sullen. I have known the bass in a well-stocked pool utterly to refuse the most tempting bait through an entire day, for nothing more than a pistol-shot fired close by. twang of a bow-string seems to frighten nothing. It was the old first note of music made by Apollo.

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BILL SANDERS GETS HIS HANDS "ONTO A BIBLE."
CHAPTER XIX.

NICHOLAS visited his protégés every evening for a week after he had procured places and employment for them. He carried them newspapers and books, read to them, discussed business and the affairs of the nation, and heard the stories of their experience in their new spheres of life. It would be hard to tell whether he or they learned the more, or enjoyed the more, in these reunions. That they missed their old excitements and their vagrant liberty, was very evident; but no one seemed so far to regret the change as to be tempted to return to his old life. Every day placed them fur

ther from danger, and all of them had conceived a hearty respect and friendship for their benefactor. Nicholas was very much gratified that, at the end of the first week, they paid their board-bills, though they must have been sorely tempted to use the money in their hands for the improvement of their wardrobe. For this, Nicholas and they were indebted to Glezen, who had had a long talk with Cavendish, and placed upon him the responsibility of seeing that his companions did their duty.

The result of many discussions, in which the reclaimed vagrants gave Nicholas some valuable lessons in human nature and phil[Copyright, Scribner & Co., 1877-]

osophical policy, appeared at the end of the week, in an announcement which threw one of the worst and poorest neighborhoods of the city into a fever of curious excitement. "The Beggars' Paradise," as the neighborhood was familiarly called, had something new to think of and talk about.

Nicholas, in his conversations with Cavendish, found that he was a man of very fair education, and exceptionally versatile gifts. He had been the inventor of a thousand schemes for winning money without work; his wits had been sharpened in all directions; he was familiar with every phase of pauper life; he knew thoroughly the kind of demoralization which it engendered, and he possessed not only a facile tongue, but an illimitable impudence, which a worthy motive could readily soften into selfrespectful courage and ingenious address.

On the border of "The Beggars' Paradise," at the corner of a street devoted mainly to the purchase and sale of old clothes, many of which were collected and dawned by the beggars themselves, there was a dilapidated assembly-room, called by the ambitious proprietor "The Atheneum." In earlier days it had been the scene of sundry cheap shows and low theatrical exhibitions. During one whole season a quartette of negro minstrels, with very large posters and very small jokes, had occupied "The Atheneum." This was in its "palmiest days." But the minstrels and the glory departed together. The grime of years had clothed itself upon the bare arms and legs of Melpomene and Terpsichore, which illuminated the drop-scene of the little stage; many of the seats were broken; the spiders had woven their gray webs across the angles and corners; boys had scrawled the walls with rude effigies of the proprietor, and legends not altogether complimentary to his sense of decency and habits of cleanliness, and everything betrayed not only the degeneracy of the hall itself, but that of the neighborhood on which it had originally depended for support.

Nicholas, for a very modest sum, secured a lease of "The Atheneum" for six months. He caused the shutters to be opened one bright morning, started the fires, put a little army of laboring men and women into the room with brooms and scrubbing-brushes, rolled the presiding muses out of sight, and before night had a clean little theater that would comfortably seat five hundred people.

In the meantime he had informed his friends and associates of what he was doing, VOL. XIV.-19.

and the greatest curiosity and interest prevailed throughout the little group. Ways and means were discussed, prophesies were indulged in, and all looked forward to the night of the opening with keenly delightful anticipations.

The announcement of the first performance at "The Atheneum " was composed by the "Larkin Bureau," and revised and modified under the suggestions of Mr. Jonas Cavendish and his friends; and "The Beggar's Paradise" awoke one morning to the surprise of the flaming poster, on every convenient dead-wall of the region, to which allusion has already been made. It read as follows:

GREAT BREAD MEETING! Every Ticket a Loaf of Bread, wrapped neatly in brown paper!

Good news to "The Beggars' Paradise"! Re-opening of The Atheneum ! On Thursday evening, January 10th, at 8 o'clock, The Atheneum will be re-opened for a lecture on Bread.

HOW TO GET IT AND HOW TO MAKE IT! The tickets, each of which will be a loaf of the

best bread, are placed at the low price of one dime. Just five hundred loaves will be packed in the boxoffice, and every member of the audience, on payment of the admission fee, will receive a loaf, and be admitted to the door on showing the same.

The audience are particularly requested not to break the papers and eat the contents during the exercises!

The amusements of "The Beggars' Paradise" were few; and as every attendant upon the performance was promised an equivalent for his money in bread, men and women alike were more than ready to avail themselves of the opportunity to enjoy a social evening in comfortable quarters.

During the afternoon of the opening day, a huge load of bread was drawn to the door of "The Atheneum," and carried upstairs in the sight of an admiring crowd of boys and idle men. So there was no longer any doubt about the bread. A competent force of police was secured for the preservation of order, and for the sifting out and sending from the building such drunken applicants for tickets as would be likely to make disturbance.

At half-past seven o'clock, Nicholas stationed himself in the box-office, with Talking Tim at his side. The former was to take the money, and the latter was to pass out the bread, which so filled the little office that they had hardly sufficient room to stand. Their friends had previously been admitted to the hall by a private door, and had found

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