At that, I hold no brief for the pheasant—­except when served with breadcrumb dressing and currant jelly he is no friend of mine.  It ill becomes Americans, with our own record behind us, to chide other people for the senseless murder of wild things; and besides, speaking personally, I have a reasonably open mind on the subject of wild-game shooting.  Myself, I shot a wild duck once.  He was not flying at the time.  He was, as the stockword goes, setting.  I had no self-reproaches afterward however.  As between that duck and myself I regarded it as an even break—­as fair for one as for the other—­because at the moment I myself was, as we say, setting too.  But if, in the interests of true sportsmanship, they must have those annual massacres I certainly should admire to see what execution a picked half dozen of American quail hunters, used to snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of Georgia and Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until such time as their consciences mastered them and they desisted from slaughter!

Be that as it may, pheasant shooting is the last word in the English sporting calendar.  It is a sport strictly for the gentry.  Except in the capacity of innocent bystanders the lower orders do not share in it.  It is much too good for them; besides, they could not maintain the correct wardrobe for it.  The classes derive one substantial benefit from the institution however.  The sporting instinct of the landed Englishman has led to the enactment of laws under which an ordinary person goes smack to jail if he is caught sequestrating a clandestine pheasant bird; but it does not militate against the landowner’s peddling off his game after he has destroyed it.  British thrift comes in here.  And so in carload lots it is sold to the marketmen.  The result is that in the fall of the year pheasants are cheaper than chickens; and any person who can afford poultry on his dinner table can afford pheasants.

The Continental hunter makes an even more spectacular appearance than his British brother.  No self-respecting German or French sportsman would think of faring forth after the incarnate brown hare or the ferocious wood pigeon unless he had on a green hat with a feather in it; and a green suit to match the hat; and swung about his neck with a cord a natty fur muff to keep his hands in between shots; and a swivel chair to sit in while waiting for the wild boar to come along and be bowled over.

Being hunted with a swivel chair is what makes the German wild boar wild.  On occasion, also, the hunter wears, suspended from his belt, a cute little hanger like a sawed-off saber, with which to cut the throats of his spoil.  Then, when it has spoiled some more, they will serve it at a French restaurant.

It was our fortune to be in France on the famous and ever-memorable occasion when the official stag of the French Republic met a tragic and untimely end, under circumstances acutely distressing to all who believe in the divinity bestowed prerogatives of the nobility.  The Paris edition of the Herald printed the lamentable tale on its front page and I clipped the account.  I offer it here in exact reproduction, including the headline: