About That Time An Old Friend Of The Family, Who Took An Interest In
Me And Wished To Do Something To Encourage Me In My Natural History
Tastes, Made Me A Present Of A Set Of Pen-And-Ink Drawings.
There was,
however, nothing in these pictures to help me in the line I had taken:
they were mostly architectural drawings made by himself of buildings -
houses, churches, castles, and so on, but my brother fell in love with
them and began to try to get them from me.
He could not rest without
them, and was continually offering me something of his own in exchange
for them; but though I soon grew tired of looking at them I refused to
part with them, either because his anxiety to have them gave them a
fictitious value in my sight, or because it was pleasing to be able to
inflict a little pain on him in return for the many smarts I had
suffered at his hands. At length one day, finding me still unmoved, he
all at once offered to teach me to shoot and to allow me the use of
one of the guns in exchange for the pictures. I could hardly believe
my good fortune: it would have surprised me less if he had offered to
give me his horse with "saddle and bridle also."
As soon as the drawings were in his hand he took me to our gun-room
and gave me a quite unneeded lesson in the art of loading a gun - first
so much powder, then a wad well rammed down with the old obsolete
ramrod; then so much shot and a second wad and ramming down; then a
percussion cap on the nipple.
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