The life of Joseph Bishop Author:John W. Gray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: wing; and he knowing more about the prayer- book than a gun, and gunning was very awkward, I had to load for him, and usually loaded the shot-guns very heavily. ... more »His eyesight not being the best, and wishing to get from under the timber, he concluded that he would walk out on the ice and take a stand. At length a flock came over him and he began to take aim, but could not get his bead until they were straight above him, which causing him to lean back rather far, when he fired the old gun kicked, and the old man's heels were in an instant upon a parallel with his head, both being at least four feet from the ice, until he came down in the hardest fall I ever saw a man get. But it was not that of Lucifer. He lay and grunted awhile and scrambled up, took his head into his hands, and leaving the gun went staggering out, and not a goose had he quite killed. I was sorry for the old man, but then I couldn't help laughing. I hunted by short excursions through this winter, at the close of which I had killed swans and geese enough to yield a sufficient quantity of feathers to make a large bed, which I sold to James Douglass for the handsome sum of onespecie dollar per pound; and this was not the only fruits of .my labor and fine sport, but a clear receipt for my board and washing, as good hunters never had bills of this kind to adjust in this age of the country. CHAPTER VI. The bleak winter had been chased away by a lovely spring, which passed so mildly into the summer that one would think there was no good reason for a division in the two seasons of the year, save that one was the time for sowing and the other growing; one was the time for budding, and the other for blooming and maturing ; but the brightest seasons are sometimes fraught with the gloomiest and bitterest disasters, and...« less