“Oh, yes!” said the person addressed. “I remember seeing you at the lakes last summer. What a pleasant company we had at the hotel!”
“Yes, but I went especially for the shooting. Such fine game up there! Birds of many kinds, ducks, and now and then a deer. I went just for sport, though I didn’t care much about the things after they were shot. We went fishing one day, and the fish were so small we let a quantity die in the bottom of the boat rather than carry them home. We had quite an excitement one day when we found we had killed a robin and her youngsters were in a nest close by with open mouths.”
“What did you do with the little birds?” said Miss Warburton.
“Oh, they had to starve, of course!”
“And did you bring home the mother bird?”
“No, she was pretty badly hurt, and couldn’t live long. We had so many ducks and other things that we couldn’t carry all of them.”
“Don’t you feel badly to leave a wounded robin or duck to die slowly?”
“Oh, we men haven’t women’s hearts, Miss Warburton, or we shouldn’t shoot at all, I fear!”
“I never could see how a Christian man could find pleasure in giving pain. I know some of our professing Christians have hunted buffaloes on the American plains, and left them to die, just for the sport of killing, as some of the English hunters do in South Africa. And I suppose some who hunt foxes, and find pleasure in seeing dogs catch and tear them to pieces, profess Christianity.”