The Attache | Page 2

is the highest meed of praise that can be bestowed on a
book. A man, who writes thus, can write for ever.
Now, it is not only not my intention to write for ever, or as Mr. Slick
would say "for everlastinly;" but to make my bow and retire very soon
from the press altogether. I might assign many reasons for this modest
course, all of them plausible, and some of them indeed quite dignified.
I like dignity: any man who has lived the greater part of his life in a
colony is so accustomed to it, that he becomes quite enamoured of it,
and wrapping himself up in it as a cloak, stalks abroad the "observed of
all observers." I could undervalue this species of writing if I thought
proper, affect a contempt for idiomatic humour, or hint at the
employment being inconsistent with the grave discharge of important
official duties, which are so distressingly onerous, as not to leave me a
moment for recreation; but these airs, though dignified, will
unfortunately not avail me. I shall put my dignity into my pocket,
therefore, and disclose the real cause of this diffidence.
In the year one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, I embarked at
Halifax on board the Buffalo store-ship for England. She was a noble
teak built ship of twelve or thirteen hundred tons burden, had excellent

accommodation, and carried over to merry old England, a very merry
party of passengers, quorum parva pars fui, a youngster just emerged
from college.
On the banks of Newfoundland we were becalmed, and the passengers
amused themselves by throwing overboard a bottle, and shooting at it
with ball. The guns used for this occasion, were the King's muskets,
taken from the arm-chest on the quarter-deck. The shooting was
execrable. It was hard to say which were worse marksmen, the officers
of the ship, or the passengers. Not a bottle was hit: many reasons were
offered for this failure, but the two principal ones were, that the
muskets were bad, and that it required great skill to overcome the
difficulty occasioned by both, the vessel and the bottle being in motion
at the same time, and that motion dissimilar.
I lost my patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had
frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was the
extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any
possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by
accident shoot better.
"Give me a gun, Captain," said I, "and I will shew you how to uncork
that bottle."
I took the musket, but its weight was beyond my strength of arm. I was
afraid that I could not hold it out steadily, even for a moment, it was so
very heavy--I threw it up with a desperate effort and fired. The neck of
the bottle flew up in the air a full yard, and then disappeared. I was
amazed myself at my success. Every body was surprised, but as every
body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as
I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and
I made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I
became a boaster.
"Ah," said I coolly, "you must be born with a rifle in your hand,
Captain, to shoot well. Every body shoots well in America. I do not call
myself a good shot. I have not had the requisite experience; but there
are those who can take out the eye of a squirrel at a hundred yards."

"Can you see the eye of a squirrel at that distance?" said the Captain,
with a knowing wink of his own little ferret eye.
That question, which raised a general laugh at my expense, was a
puzzler. The absurdity of the story, which I had heard a thousand times,
never struck me so forcibly. But I was not to be pat down so easily.
"See it!" said I, "why not? Try it and you will find your sight improve
with your shooting. Now, I can't boast of being a good marksman
myself; my studies" (and here I looked big, for I doubted if he could
even read, much less construe a chapter in the Greek Testament) "did
not leave me much time. A squirrel is too small an object for all but an
experienced man, but a "large" mark like a quart bottle can easily be hit
at a hundred yards--that is nothing."
"I will take you a bet," said he, "of a doubloon, you do not do it again?"
"Thank you," I replied with great indifference: "I never bet, and besides,
that gun has so injured my shoulder, that I