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    Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety.  I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did.  Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings.  I speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods.  Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected.  I did not pity the fishes nor the worms.  This was habit.  As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds.  But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this.  It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.  Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes -- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education -- make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness -- hunters as well as fishers of men.  Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who

                 "yave not of the text a pulled hen
            That saith that hunters ben not holy men."
There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.  This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it.  No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.  The hare in its extremity cries like a child.  I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions.
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