The Manly Maiden is not, as a rule, the natural product of a genuine country life.  The daughter of rich parents, who have spent a great part of their lives in a centre of commercial activity, she is introduced to a new home in the country at about the age of fourteen.  Seeing that all those who live in the neighbourhood are in one way or another associated with outdoor sports, and that the favour in which the men are held and their fame vary directly as their power to ride or to shoot straight, she becomes possessed by the notion that she too must, if she is to please at all, be proficient in the sports of men.  Merely to ride to hounds is, of course, not sufficiently distinctive.  Many women do that, without losing at all the ordinary characteristics of women.  She must ride bare-backed, she must understand a horse’s ailments and his points, she must trudge (in the constant society of men) over fallows and through turnips in pursuit of partridges, she must be able to talk learnedly of guns, of powders, and of shot, she must possess a gun of her own, and think she knows how to use it, she must own a retriever, and herself make him submissive by the frequent application of a silver-headed dog-whip.

These attainments are her ideals of earthly bliss, and she sets out to realise them with a terrible perseverance.  Her father, of course, knows but little of sport.  He is, however, afflicted with the ordinary desire to shine as a sportsman, and as a host of sportsmen.  He stocks his coverts with game, and invites large shooting parties to stay with him.  He himself takes to a gun as a hen might take to the water; although, as his daughter contemptuously expresses it, he is calculated to miss a hippopotamus at ten yards, he seems to imagine, if one may be permitted to judge from the wild frequency of his shots, that it is the easiest thing in the world to hit a pheasant or a partridge flying at ten times that distance.  From such a father the Manly Maiden easily secures permission, first of all, to walk with the men while they are shooting, and subsequently to carry a gun herself.

And now the difficulties of the situation begin to make themselves felt, not, indeed, by her, for she remains sublimely unconscious to the end, but by the men who are compelled to associate with her upon her ventures.  No man will ever hesitate to rebuke another for carrying his gun in such a way as to threaten danger; but, when a lady allows him to inspect the inside of her loaded gun-barrels, or shoots down the line at an evasive rabbit, he must suffer in silence, and can only seek compensation for restraining his tongue by incontinently removing his body to a safe place, where he can neither shoot nor be shot.  At luncheon, however, he may be gratified by hearing the Manly Maiden rally him on the poor result of his morning’s sport.  She will then favour him, at length, with her opinions as to how a driven partridge or a rocketing pheasant should be shot, flavouring