My finger felt the
trigger, and the least increase of pressure would have been fatal; but
in the act I hesitated, dropped the barrel, and watched the beautiful
bird.
That watching so often stayed the shot that at last it grew to be a
habit: the mere simple pleasure of seeing birds and animals, when they
were quite unconscious that they were observed, being too great to be
spoilt by the discharge. After carefully getting a wire over a jack;
after waiting in a tree till a hare came along; after sitting in a mound
till the partridges began to run together to roost; in the end the wire
or gun remained unused. The same feeling has equally checked my hand in
legitimate shooting: time after time I have flushed partridges without
firing, and have let the hare bound over the furrow free.
I have entered many woods just for the pleasure of creeping through the
brake and the thickets. Destruction in itself was not the motive; it was
an overpowering instinct for woods and fields. Yet woods and fields lose
half their interest without a gun--I like the power to shoot, even
though I may not use it. The very perfection of our modern guns is to me
one of their drawbacks: the use of them is so easy and so certain of
effect that it takes away the romance of sport.
There could be no greater pleasure to me than to wander with a matchlock
through one of the great forests or wild tracts that still remain in
England.
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