There Is One Great Drawback To The Publication Of Sporting
Adventures--They Always Appear To Deal Not A Little In The Marvellous;
And This Effect Is Generally Heightened By The Use Of The First Person
In Writing, Which At All Events May Give An Egotistical Character To A
Work.
This, however, cannot easily be avoided, if a person is describing
his own adventures, and he labours under the disadvantage of being
criticised by readers who do not know him personally, and may,
therefore, give him credit for gross exaggeration.
It is this feeling that deters many men who have passed through years of
wild sports from publishing an account of them. The fact of being able
to laugh in your sleeve at the ignorance of a reader who does not credit
you, is but a poor compensation for being considered a better shot with
a long bow than with a rifle. Often have I pitied Gordon Cumming when I
have heard him talked of as a palpable Munchausen, by men who never
fired a rifle, or saw a wild beast, except in a cage; and still these
men form the greater proportion of the `readers' of these works.
Men who have not seen, cannot understand the grandeur of wild sports in
a wild country. There is an indescribable feeling of supremacy in a man
who understands his game thoroughly, when he stands upon some elevated
point and gazes over the wild territory of savage beasts. He feels
himself an invader upon the solitudes of nature.
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