And, next, my gallant young Sportsmen, just sharpen up your attention, and, if you have ears, prepare to lend them now.  Be, in fact, all ears.  At any rate, get yourselves as near as possible to that desirable condition, for we are going to discuss shooting-lunches, and all that pertains to them.  Think of it!  Are not some of your happiest memories, and your most delightful anticipations, bound up with the mid-day meal, at which the anxieties and disappointments of the morning, the birds you missed, the birds that, though they got up in front of you, were shot by your jealous neighbour, the wiped-eyes, the hands torn in the thorn-bushes, at which, as I say, all these are forgotten, when you lay aside your gun, and sit down to your short repose.  Then it is that the talker shines supreme.  All the conversation which may have been broken in upon during the morning by the necessity for posting yourself at the hot corner, or the grassy ride, or in the butt, or for polishing off a right and left of partridges, can then flow free and uninterrupted.  Ah, happy moments, when the bad shot becomes as the good, and all distinctions are levelled!  How well, how gratefully do I remember you!  Still, in my waking fancies, there rises to my nose a savoury odour, telling of stew or hot-pot, and still the crisp succulence of the jam tartlet has honour in my memory.  Ah, tempi passati, tempi passati!  But away, fancy, and to our work, which is to speak of

SHOOTING-LUNCHES

in their relation to talk:—­

(1.) Be extremely careful, unless you know exactly the ways of your host with regard to his shooting-lunch, not to express to him before lunch any very definite opinion as to what the best kind of lunch is.  If, for instance, you rashly declare that, for your own part, you detest a solemn sit-down-in-a-farmhouse lunch, and that your ideal is a sandwich, a biscuit and a nip out of a flask, and if you then find yourself lunching off three courses at a comfortable table, why you’ll be in a bit of a hole.  Consistency would prompt you to abstain, appetite urges you to eat.  What is a poor talker to do?  Obviously, he must get out somehow.  Here is a suggested method.  Begin by admiring the room.

“By Jove, what a jolly little room this is.  It’s as spick and span as a model dairy.  I wish you’d take me on as your tenant, CHALMERS, when you’ve got a vacancy.”

CHALMERS will say, “It’s not a bad little hole.  Old Mrs. NUBBLES keeps things wonderfully spruce.  This is one of the cottages I built five years ago.”

There’s your first move.  Your next is as follows.  Every rustic-cottage contains gruesome china-ornaments and excruciating-cheap German-prints of such subjects as “The Tryst” (always spelt “The Trist” on the German print), “The Saylor’s Return,” “The Warior’s Dreem,” “Napoleon at Arcola,” and so forth.  Point to a