Yonder is a cottage, down in the glen. If you will come and stand with us beside the casement, you can just see the white walls of that humble home, smiling through the embowering foliage. There live a daughter and her parents, and if you would see piety, go into that cottage. Shall I tell you how their Sunday is spent? It will be a lesson to us all.
When breakfast is over, the little family, attired in their best, set forth to church, the daughter walking betwixt her aged parents, and kindly supporting their steps, while every thing around them soothes their hearts for the duties of the day. It is a September morning, and all Nature is filled with harmony. Not a leaf that rustles on the air, nor a brook that babbles by, nor a bird that whistles in the wood, nor the voice of a child singing from the overflowing gladness of its heart, but is sweeter to their ear, and more soothing to their souls, than the music of a Garcia. And when they reach the old church how every one will make room for them! And so, after service, will they return home.
And in the afternoon, they will gather around the little table, beneath the open casement, through which float gently the hum of bees and the fragrance of flowers, and there they will sit, listening to the word of God, as their daughter reads it aloud. There is such a quiet, a soft dreamy quiet around, that it soothes them insensibly to a holy calm. The very clock seems to tick less audibly; the cat sits purring in her lowest tone; the bird, from his cage, looks silently down; the sunbeams fall hushed on the clean, bright floor; and the rose-leaves by the window, that now and then float to the ground, strike with a faint low sound on the earth, like the foot-fall of a fairy at moonlight.
Every word of that sacred volume the listeners drink in eagerly, for are they not “athirst for the waters of life?” Aye! they drink it in the more eagerly because read by her, whose voice, to them, is softer than that of a cherub.
And such is Cottage Piety. The proud may sneer at it—the rich may regard it as a fiction—the dwellers in town may look on it as an enthusiast’s picture; but the great God who made us all, and who notes every deed, beholds thousands of such scenes, every Sabbath of the year.
Sports and Pastimes.—THE FOWLING-PIECE.
Before making choice of a gun, the sportsman should determine what weight he can conveniently carry. The heaviest gun, as regards shooting, will be most effective; but he should recollect, that unless he be a very robust person, a light gun will on the whole bring him more game, as a few pounds in the weight makes a deal of difference in the distance the person can carry it with ease, and few persons can shoot well when fatigued.
The most approved guns under the system which prescribes a heavy charge of powder and a light one of shot, are double-barrels, bearing the following relative proportions of length to calibre:[[1]]—fourteen gauge, thirty-four inches long; seventeen gauge, thirty-two inches long; twenty gauge, thirty inches long. For the shooter who never uses shot larger than No. 6 or 7, these are proper proportions; and did the guns weigh nine or ten pounds each, they would shoot No. 6 or 7 shot well. But when under seven pounds and a half, which is the heaviest gun we should think of using in hot weather, or for a long day’s woodcock shooting, they do not throw small shot as effectively as a short gun throws large shot.
Barrels twenty-eight inches long, and fourteen, sixteen, or eighteen gauge, are of convenient size for a gun not exceeding seven pounds and a half. Those of eighteen gauge shoot shot well; but those of fourteen throw a cartridge more satisfactorily. Sixteen is a desirable medium. These barrels are as efficient as long ones for short distances, viz. under thirty yards; and nine tenths of game brought to the bag is killed within that distance. And for making long shots, the wire cartridge has obviated the necessity of using long guns. A short gun, of the same weight as a long one, is much less tiresome to carry. A pound additional weight at the breech is not so fatiguing to the arm as half that weight added to the end of the barrel; it is the top-heavy gun that distresses the shooter.