Life — December 13, 1883 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE HUNTING SEASON. CHASE OF THE WILD GOOSE. THE pursuit of the Wild Goose is carried on entirely by means of decoys carefully trained for the purpose, and with which they may be lured from a long distance. If a little care is taken not to alarm them prematurely, their capture, except in the case of very old and wily birds, is easy. Although the winter is the true season for hunting them, yet, being totally unprotected by the game-laws, the finest specimens are sometimes taken in the summer months, when they often appear listless and off their guard. In the warm afternoons of July and August they may be seen basking in sheltered nooks of the coast from Cape May to Mt. Desert, (Anser Nincompoopus.) and are frequently slaughtered in great numbers, seemingly unconscious of their danger. that bourne where coats of arms and glue are not necessities, and left the colossal interests he inherited and furthered, to three sons, It is on this tripartite issue that the views of gencrations to come must necessarily stick, in so far at least as a combination of glue and Aauteur are concerned. The GRAMERCYS are now of our set. They have a grand- father, a coat of arms, money and a refrigerating smile. They remember the grandfather, but are somewhat disposed to forget the glue. Like many of us, they are inclined to indulge in exub- erant litigation. It is natural for a man, if he has both his own fortune and that of a relative in charge, to spend the relative’s fortune and keep his own, This is in strict accordance with those principles of political economy which made some of our grandfathers great. Some- times, however, the relative takes it unkindly. Most relatives, strange to say, when copiously mentioned in a last will and testa- ment, desire to do the spending themselves, This is a sordid and grasping spirit, which every dutiful guardian should check. For the purposes of discipline, however, it is necessary to keep the relative so poor that he cannot enter into litigation. In this one point, the elder Gramercy failed. GRAMERCY junior, when he came of age and found a bewilderingly deep hole in the ground where he expected to find an estate, set up such a howl of mingled suspicion and astonishment, as to attract the attention of several disinterested minions of the law, by whose advice he plunged into litigation with an abandon most pitiful to see. The result was that the elder GRAMERCY, who had lovingly tried to keep his brother from the perils of wealth by generously scattering his patrimony to the four winds, found himself posing unpleasantly as a defendant, and the judge, vul- garly adhering to the law, so worded his decision as to make it appear that he thought the juvenile Gramercy in the right. This evil and pernicious decision now gives GRAMERCY the younger a chance to indulge to the utmost his riotous appetite for spending his own money, and clearly does gross injustice to the guardianship of which the senior GRAMERCY had just reason to be proud. But this is not all, The elder GRAMERCY, in order to properly obey the mandate of the tyrannical court, was compelled to reduce himself to the position of a pauper, for the sum of his own for- tune but equaled the moiety he had so magnanimously spent for his brother. Toa member of the Lower CLasses, this would have meant ruin—moral, mental and social. Not so with the possessor of an adhesive grandfather and a crest. With three words he repaired the injury done to his fortune, by proposing marriage to a lady whose father, in consideration of the crest and grandfather, was willing to give a fortune with her. This clearly demonstrates that Heaven looks after the Aristo- crats, and at the same time shows that our climate is unfavorable to the durability of glue. Among the Lower CLassés the result would have been somewhat different. comicbooks.com