and pitfalls.  For there are few men who can aver, with perfect accuracy, that they have never added a foot or two to their longest shot, or to the highest jump of their favourite horse, and have never, in short, exaggerated a difficulty in order to increase the triumph of overcoming it.  But the modesty that confines most men within reasonable limits of untruthfulness has no restraining power over the Spurious Sportsman, to whom somewhat, therefore, may be forgiven for the sake of the warning he affords.

He is, as a rule, a dweller in London, for it is there that he finds the largest stock of credulity and tolerance.  To walk with him in the streets, or to travel with him in a train, is to receive for nothing a liberal education in sport.  No man has ever shot a greater number of rocketing pheasants with a more unerring accuracy than he has—­in Pall Mall, St. James’s Street, or Piccadilly.  He will point out to you the exact spot where he would post himself if the birds were being driven from St. James’s Square over the Junior Carlton Club.  He will then expatiate learnedly on angle, and swing, and line of flight, and having raised his stick suddenly to his shoulder, by way of an example, will knock off the hat of an inoffensive passer-by.  This incident will remind him of an adventure he had while shooting with Lord X.—­“A deuced good chap at bottom; a bit stiff at first, but the best fellow going when you really know him”—­through the well-known coverts of his lordship’s estate.  When travelling safely in a railway-carriage, he is the boldest cross-country rider in existence.  He will indicate to you a fence full of dangers, and having taught you how it may best be cleared, will add, that it is nothing to one that he jumped last season with the Quytchley.  “My dear Sir,” he will say, “a man who was riding behind me was so astounded that he measured it then and there with a tape he happened to have with him; Six foot of post and rail as stiff as an iron-clad, and twenty foot of gravel-pit beyond.”  He will also speak with infinite contempt of those who “crane” or stick to the roads.  It will sometimes happen to him to get invited—­really invited—­to an actual country house where genuine sport is carried on.  Here, however, he will generally have brought with him his wrong gun, or his “idiot of a man” will have packed the wrong kind of cartridges, or his horse will have suddenly developed an unaccountable trick of refusing, which results in a crushed hat and a mud-stained coat for his rider.  These little accidents will by no means dash his spirits, or impair his volubility in the smoking-room, where he may be heard conducting a dull discussion on sporting records, or carrying on an animated controversy about powder, size of shot or bore, choke, the proper kind of gaiter, or the right stamp of horse for the country.  Having shot with indifferent results on a very big day through coverts, he will afterwards aver that such sport is very poor fun, and that what he really cares