I never knew a boy brought up in the country who was not at one time an enthusiastic trapper. Just as mankind in the infancy of the world were forced to pit their energy and skill against the cunning of the animals needed for food or of such that by reason of their fierceness endangered human life, so the country boy of to-day puts his intelligence to work to circumvent the superiority of such animal life as by fleetness of foot or stroke of wing can avoid the pursuer. It is a question largely of brain against anatomical structure. No Indian, even, ever outran a deer, nor savage anywhere by mere bodily exertion stopped the flight of a bird. Men were all sportsmen, in a sense, when sport, as we call it, was necessary to human existence. As centuries rolled by, such animals and birds as came in daily contact with man necessarily had their sleepy wits aroused, and now it is a case of cunning against cunning. We are all familiar with such phrases as “wild as a hawk” and “shy as a deer.” In the morning of man’s career on earth there were no such words as “shy” and “wild.” They came into use, as words are constantly coming into our language, because circumstances make them a necessity; and as men were trappers before they were traders or tillers of the field, so the words are old, and while animal life lasts they will be retained. Nowadays we generally outgrow this love of trapping, or it remains in the love of sport with gun or rod. But, old Izaak Walton and Frank Forrester to the contrary notwithstanding, I hold that nothing in fishing or shooting has that freshness, that thrilling excitement, that close touch with nature, that clings to our early days, when, in autumn and winter, we went the round of the traps. How through the long night we had visions of the rabbit cautiously approaching the box-trap on the edge of the swamp! How clearly we saw in the corner of the weedy old worm-fence the stupid opossum bungling along, and awoke with a start as the clumsy creature sprang the trap from the outside! I pity the boy who has not had such a distressing dream.