One day I entered the billiard-room where these three gentlemen were high in words. “The thing shall not be done,” I heard Captain Tagrag say: “I won't stand it.”
“Vat, begause you would have de bird all to yourzelf, hey?” said the Baron.
“You sall not have a single fezare of him, begar,” said the Count: “ve vill blow you, M. de Taguerague; parole d'honneur, ve vill.”
“What's all this, gents,” says I, stepping in, “about birds and feathers?”
“Oh,” says Tagrag, “we were talking about—about—pigeon-shooting; the Count here says he will blow a bird all to pieces at twenty yards, and I said I wouldn't stand it, because it was regular murder.”
“Oh, yase, it was bidgeon-shooting,” cries the Baron: “and I know no better sbort. Have you been bidgeon-shooting, my dear Squire? De fon is gabidal.”
“No doubt,” says I, “for the shooters, but mighty bad sport for the PIGEON.” And this joke set them all a-laughing ready to die. I didn't know then what a good joke it WAS, neither; but I gave Master Baron, that day, a precious good beating, and walked off with no less than fifteen shillings of his money.
As a sporting man, and a man of fashion, I need not say that I took in the Flare-up regularly; ay, and wrote one or two trifles in that celebrated publication (one of my papers, which Tagrag subscribed for me, Philo-pestitiaeamicus, on the proper sauce for teal and widgeon—and the other, signed Scru-tatos, on the best means of cultivating the kidney species of that vegetable—made no small noise at the time, and got me in the paper a compliment from the editor). I was a constant reader of the Notices to Correspondents, and, my early education having been rayther neglected (for I was taken from my studies and set, as is the custom in our trade, to practise on a sheep's head at the tender age of nine years, before I was allowed to venture on the humane countenance,)—I say, being thus curtailed and cut off in my classical learning, I must confess I managed to pick up a pretty smattering of genteel information from that treasury of all sorts of knowledge; at least sufficient to make me a match in learning for all the noblemen and gentlemen who came to our house. Well, on looking over the Flare-up notices to correspondents, I read, one day last April, among the notices, as follows:—
“'Automodon.' We do not know the precise age of Mr. Baker of Covent Garden Theatre; nor are we aware if that celebrated son of Thespis is a married man.
“'Ducks and Green-peas' is informed, that when A plays his rook to B's second Knight's square, and B, moving two squares with his Queen's pawn, gives check to his adversary's Queen, there is no reason why B's Queen should not take A's pawn, if B be so inclined.