Maurice later became a noted author, Will an attorney-at-law, the dean of American archers and a poet of remarkably happy expression. Here I feel at liberty to insert one of Will Thompson's verses, sent me in personal communications:
AN ARROW SONG
A song from green Floridian vales I heard,
Soft as the sea-moan when the waves are slow;
Sweeter than melody of brook or bird,
Keener than any winds that breathe or blow;
A magic music out of memory stirred,
A strain that charms my heart to overflow
With such vast yearning that my eyes are blurred.
Oh, song of dreams, that I no more shall know!
Bewildering carol without spoken word!
Faint as a stream's voice murmuring under snow,
Sad as a love forevermore deferred,
Song of the arrow from the Master's bow,
Sung in Floridian vales long, long ago.
WILL H. THOMPSON.
A memory of my brother Maurice.
The Thompsons devoted much of their bow shooting to birds. Not only did they hunt, but they studied the abundant avian life of the Florida coast.
An archer must always, perforce, study animate nature and learn its ways before he can capture it. In our early training with Ishi, the Indian, he taught us to look before he taught us to shoot. "Little bit walk, too much look," was his motto. The roving eye and the light step are the signs of the forest voyageur.
The ideal way for an archer to travel is to carry on his shoulders a knapsack containing a light sleeping bag and enough food to last him a week. With me this means coffee, tea, sugar, canned milk, dried fruit, rice, cornmeal, flour and baking powder mixture, a little bacon, butter, and seasoning. This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than twenty pounds, an easy load.
If you have a dog, make him carry his own dry meal in little saddle-bags on his back, as Dan Beard suggests. Then, with two dozen arrows in your quiver, and your bow, the open trail lies ahead. There is always meat to be had for the shooting. The camp fire and your dog are companions at night, and at dawn all the world rolls out before you as you go. It is a happy life!
When Ishi started to shoot with me, one bowman after another appeared on the scene to join us. Among the first came Will Compton, a man of mature years and many experiences. Brought up on the plains, he learned to shoot the bow with the Sioux Indians. As a boy of fourteen he shot his first deer with an arrow. From that time on, deer, elk, antelope, birds of all sorts, and even buffalo fell before this primitive weapon. He later hunted with the gun until the very ease of killing turned him against it. So when he came to us, he was a seasoned archer. Upon a visit to a Japanese archery gallery in the Panama-Pacific Exposition he met for the first time Arthur Young, also an expert hunter with the gun. A friendship sprang up between them, and Compton taught Young to shoot the bow.