In Darwin’s later years he might of course have been crowded with social engagements all the time. Everybody wanted to see him, to know him, to talk with him, to entertain him. The preoccupation of his work and the limitations of his health made any such social activity impossible, and it is not likely that he greatly missed it. Yet, wherever he went, he was welcome, his society was appreciated, not only for his reputation, but for itself, and when he could get about, it evidently gave him pleasure: ‘I dined with Bell at the Linnean Club, and liked my dinner ... dining out is such a novelty to me that I enjoyed it.’[246] At an earlier period, when there was more strength to spare for such diversions, he entered into them with hearty enthusiasm, and even, it appears, with a thorough rollicking zest. When he settled himself in Cambridge, after his return from the Beagle voyage, he complained that the only trouble was that life was too pleasant and some agreeable party every evening made morning labor rather difficult.[247] And of the miscellaneous social gatherings of still earlier days he writes: ‘We used often to dine together in the evening, though these dinners often included men of a higher stamp, and we sometimes drank too much, with jolly singing and playing at cards afterwards. I know that I ought to feel ashamed of days and evenings thus spent, but as some of my friends were very pleasant, and we were all in the highest spirits, I cannot help looking back to these times with much pleasure.’[248] In the matter of sports and diversions Darwin’s tastes seem to have run rather to those which are not in their nature social, though what attracted him was the character of the sports themselves, and not the element of solitude. In his youth he was passionately fond of outdoor sport, of fishing and hunting. He had a keen love for angling, he says, and would sit for hours watching his float in some solitary pool or stream, though when some one told him that he could kill the angle worms with salt and water instead of spitting them on the hook, it was a great relief to his feelings.[249] He was especially eager with a gun, and long before he took the slightest interest in the scientific study of birds, he liked to kill them. He tells us that the killing of his first snipe excited him so much that he trembled till it was difficult to reload his gun. Even after his scientific interest had begun to develop, he dropped every vestige of it in the shooting season: ‘at that time I should have thought myself mad to give up the first days of partridge-shooting for geology or any other science.’[250]