The subject of Lunch, my dear young friends, has now been exhausted. We have done, for the time, with poetry, and descend again to the ordinary prose of every-day shooting. Yet stay—before we proceed further, there is one matter apart from the mere details of sport, which may be profitably considered in this treatise. It is the divine, the delightful subject of
SMOKING.
First, I ask, do you know—(1), the man who never smokes from the night of the 11th of August up to the night of the 1st of February in the following year, for fear of injuring his sight and his shooting nerve? (2), the host who forbids all smoking amongst the guests assembled at his house for a shooting-party?
You, naturally enough, reply that you have not the honour of being acquainted with these severe, but enthusiastic gentlemen. Nobody does know them. They don't exist. But it is very useful to affect a sort of second-hand knowledge of these Gorgons of the weed, as thus:—
A Party of Guns is walking to the first beat of the day. Time, say about 10·20 A.M.
Young Sportsman (who has a pipe in his mouth, to Second Sportsman, similarly adorned). I always think the after-breakfast smoke is about the best of the day. Somehow, tobacco tastes sweeter then than at any other time of the day.
Second Sp. (puffing vigorously). Yes, it's first class; but I hold with smoke at most times of the day, after breakfast, after lunch, after dinner, and in between.
Young Sp. Well, I don't know. If I try to smoke when I'm actually shooting, I generally find I've got my pipe in the gun side of my mouth. I heard of a man the other day who knocked out three of his best teeth through bringing up his gun sharp, and forgetting he'd got a pipe in his mouth. Poor beggar! he was very plucky about it, I believe; but it made no end of a difference to his pronunciation till he got a new lot shoved in. Just like that old Johnnie in the play—Overland something or other—who lost his false set of teeth on a desert island, and couldn't make any of the other Johnnies understand him.
Second Sp. I've never had any difficulty with my smoking. I always make a habit of carrying my smokes in the left side of my mouth.
Young Sp. Oh, but you're pretty certain to get the smoke or the ashes or something, blown slap into your eyes just as you're going to loose off. No. (With decision.) I'm off my smoke when the popping begins.