“Well, Henry, where had I better go, to-day?” He will respond, looking you calmly in the face, and in a slightly admonitory tone:
His greatest favorites can obtain no more satisfactory answer, and in fact not much information of any kind, from him in relation to the flight or haunts of the birds. He appears to have discovered that knowledge worth having is worth working for, and is resolved that every man shall be his own schoolmaster. He has quite an insight into character, and appreciates the members of the club and their peculiarities.
One day a party, including a number who were not members, had been snipe-shooting, and some of the latter indulged the habit of pushing on before their neighbor to shoot any bird they may have seen alight, or had reason to believe was upon his beat. Afterwards Henry remarked, as a sort of soliloquy, “He was a poor man--did not have much education, and supposed he did not know; but he did not think it right for one sportsman to run in ahead of another in order to shoot a bird before him. Probably he was wrong; but that was the way he felt, and could not help it.”
It was this curious individual who waked us the next morning at an hour before daylight, and enjoyed heartily the satisfaction of rousing us up at that unseemly time. We were no way loth, however, and hastily swallowing our breakfasts and launching our boats, pushed out under cover of the darkness for our respective points. As yet the water and land were scarcely distinguishable, and localities could only be determined by intuition. Night was still brooding with outstretched wings on the earth; the sky seemed to be close overhead, and the clouds could not be distinguished from the open heavens. Slowly, however, the outlines of the horizon became apparent; then the heavy masses of lowering cloud that hung in the eastern sky, and left a narrow, transparent strip of light between themselves and the horizon, came out in strong relief; the stars faded and turned dim; trees, bushes, and distant elevations--the minutiæ of the landscape--appeared; long lines of sedge-grass and reeds sprang up from the water; the eastern sky, and especially the bright strip beneath the cloud, became lighter; a roseate tinge spread itself over the meadows, deepening to intensity in the east, and at last the sun peeped over the horizon.