Do not read or use your eyes any more than is absolutely necessary. When resting, dark glasses will be found a great relief to the eyes. I find that if I am getting tired of shooting, a half-hour’s gallop on a horse that does not pull freshens me up, and helps to divert my thoughts; others may prefer lying quietly down and shutting the eyes.
If you find yourself getting stale, drop the whole thing, even for several days. It will not be time wasted, as you will shoot better afterwards; and you will certainly get worse if you keep on without rest.
Never protest or dispute a score or decision. The range officers are doing their best under very trying circumstances. If you think any decision wrong, say nothing about it and forget it; you will only spoil your shooting if you worry about it. Just set your teeth and make a score a point better than the disputed one ought, in your opinion, to have been. The protesting man is a nuisance both to himself and everyone else.
Should you see a man infringing the rules, leave it to others to protest.
CHAPTER XIV
DUELLING
The mere word duelling appears to shallow minds a subject for so-called “humour,” like mothers-in-law and cats, but a moment’s thought will show that, in certain circumstances, the duel forms the only possible solution to a difficulty. And it is not an unmixed blessing that duelling is abolished in England as “Vanoc” in The Referee truly says. “For some reasons,” he writes, “the abolition of duelling [he means in England] is a mistake. Insolent and offensive language is now too frequently indulged in with impunity.... The best rule of all is never to take liberties yourself, and never to allow liberties to be taken with you, and to remember that self-defence is still the noble art.”
I think, though, that the still nobler art is the defence of others, and there are cases—which need not be gone into here—when a man must fight.