Life — September 3, 1908 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

“aL TAR“E ° In Regard to Duck Hunting AVING just returned from a duck hunt with an enthusiastic friend, I can cordially recommend it to all those who are tired of life. We arrived at our destination, on the confines of North Carolina, about seven o'clock in the evening. This is the pleasant hour, by the way, when it is my invariable custom to don a pair of soft old slippers, and with a pipe and a book, curl up before a romantic grate fire. On ILis occasion things were somewhat different. In order to get within range of the nimble duck, it is necessary to locate onescii near a sheet of cold and forbidding water in some lonely spot, where electric light plants do not grow and woolen blankets have only a distant echo. For this purpose we sat around a red hot stove in a fisherman's hut, while the icicles formed on our backs. When it came to retiring, my friend said in a cold, sepulchral voice: “ You will be called at two o'clock in the morning.’* And then [ shudiered upstairs, where I crept under one of those cardboard cotton comforters that lic along the ragged edges of civilization, and tried to get warm. Gradually wrap: ping around my feet everything there was in the room, from the rag carpet to my ascot necktie and piling on top overcoats, hairbrushes and nail files, I lay and calmly awaited my fate. Gradually becoming more and more benumbed, I was just about to lose consciousness when a big brute of a ruffian known as the “guide '* stamped into the room and Shaking me playfully until 1 broke in all the places I was frozen, shouted, “Git up! It's two o'clock. I jumped out of bed. and, there being no more clothes to put ized my gun and started down to breakfast. This con- vou! sisted of a coffee compound known as Java, Mocha, and mud ‘Then, thrusting a Uttsburgh stoxie between my teeth—for by this time I was lost to all sense of shame—we started forth. “It's a grand morning,” whispered my friend, playfully throwing over my shoulder a ton or so of decoy ducks. 1 looked around at the total darkness and replied that I was crazy about it. Scientists tell us that our vitality is at its lowest ebb between four and five in the morning. Put this back to two-thirty, ant you'll have the facts. . Lam the sort of man—I speak of it with hereditary prid who scorns to carry a package—if it weigks but three ounces. back and forth from my home. When I travel, I travel first class. Porters hurry on in front of me armed cat-a-pie with ny luggae. Therefore it was a new sensation, this skirting 1 meadow in rubber boots, gradually being filled with a new crop of chillblains, carrying a shotgun listed at twelve pounds (ac- tual weight about two hundred) with a belt of cartridges about my waist and loaded with decoy ducks ‘Thus we crept to the boats—and having got in, pulled down the lids, I confess that I am an open, hearty, bluff person. There is not a deceptive hair in my head. If I had had my way about it, I would have sat on the shore in front of a blazing fire, WRIRERY. upholstered with hot water bottles, filled with Santa Cruz rum, TPE LIAG > comicbooks.com