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Peck's Sunshine, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Shooting On Sunday, With The Mouth |
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_ There is nothing in the world that is so beautiful as to see a sporting man, one who loves to shoot the wild prairie chicken and chase the bounding duck over the plains, have a respect for the Sabbath day. There are too many of our sporting friends who, if they are out for a week's shooting, forget that they should lay away the deadly breech loader on Sunday, after oiling it, and busy themselves reading good books, or loading cartridges. However, we are proud to number among our acquaintances one sporting gentleman who would sooner cut a dog in two than to hunt on Sunday. It is related of him that on one occasion while in camp in a deer country, that his hounds got after a buck one Sunday morning, and that our friend was so incensed at the dogs that he seized his gun and shot one of the dogs dead, besides wounding the deer, and that he had to follow the deer over four miles before he could overtake the animal and put it out of its misery. A wicked companion said that he shot at the deer and killed the dog accidentally, but those who know Mr. Van Brunt would not believe the story for a moment. Not long since this gentleman left his home at Horicon and went to Owatonna, Minn., for a few weeks' hunt. He hunted a good deal in town, and became somewhat acquainted with the fair sex as well as the chickens and other ducks of the prairies. However, Sunday came, and while the other wretches went out snooting on Sunday, our friend hied himself to the Sabbath school. His presence was observed by a teacher, and he, by the way, observed _her_ presence, and being a stranger and a pious looking man, she invited him to help her teach her class. He accepted, and seated beside the fair teacher, he chipped in an occasional remark to the class, while he looked into the soulful, pious eyes of the handsome teacher. She introduced him to the superintendent as a pious young man from Wisconsin, and the superintendent invited him to address the school. It was new business to our friend, but he said he never had anything sawed off onto him unless he stood it like a man, so he got up, with the girl's eyes on him, and told the children the beautiful story of the cross, and how Samson went up in a chariot of fire, and Adam was found in the bullrushes by a Sunday school teacher, while he was shooting blue wing teal, and how Noah and Sat Clark built an ark and coasted around Uoricon lake and landed on Iron Ridge and sent out a canvas-back duck to see if there was any living thing this side of Schleisingerville, and how the duck came back with a sprig of wild celery in its bill which it had found at Lake Koshkonong. He told how the locusts came down on the democratic party and lected Garfield, and counseled the children to be good and they would have a soft thing. He said evil communications corrupted two of a kind, and they could not be too careful with their pennies, and advised them to give up the soul destroying habit of buying taffy, and try and lead a different life, and put their money into the missionary box, where the wicked cease from troubling, and give us a rest. He would have gone on all the afternoon, only the superintendent of the Sunday school told the children that the exercises would close with "Little Drops of Water," and our friend sat down and wiped the perspiration from his brow. The teacher said that his words had opened new beauties to her in the Scriptures, though he was a little off on some of his statistics. He told her, by way of apology, that she couldn't expect much religion from a man that came from so strong a democratic county as Dodge county. This may be all a lie, but if it is, we got it from one of the best liars of the State. _ |
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