* * * * * PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOL. 108, JANUARY 12, 1895. _edited by Sir Francis Burnand_ * * * * * TALL TALES OF SPORT AND ADVENTURE. (_By Mr. Punch's own Short Story-teller._) INTRODUCTION. Not many living men, and even fewer in the ages that are past, have--if I may use the word--sported with greater assiduity and success than I have during a life which is even now little past its middle period. At one time on horseback, at another on the bounding and impulsive elephant; now bestriding the matchless dromedary on his native prairie, now posted on foot in a jungle crowded with golden pheasants in all the native splendour of their plumage; sometimes matching my solitary craft against a host of foxes on the swelling uplands of Leicestershire, sometimes facing the Calydonian boar or the sanguinary panther in their woodland lairs, dealing showers of leaden death from a hundred tubes, or tracking my fearful prey by the lonely light of a wax vesta and despatching it at midnight with my trusty bowie--wherever there were leagues to be walked, risks to be run, or fastnesses to be rushed there not only have I been the first, but (paradoxical as it may appear) there also have I succeeded and have never been successfully followed. My experiences are therefore unique, and it is in the hope that they may to some extent profit a younger generation, less inured, I fear, to hardship and danger than my own, that I now set pen to paper and recount some of the exploits that have made my name famous wherever sport is loved and true sportsmen are revered.