[4V50 Gary]

“A woodsman who was noted as a ‘crack shot’ among his hunting companions felt sure he was going to win fame as a select rifleman in the army; for he said that in killing a squirrel he always put the bullet through the head, though the squirrel might be perched at the time on the topmost limb of the tallest tree. An Irishman who had seen service in the Mexican War, and was attentively listening to this young hunter’s boast, fixed his twinkling eye upon the aspiring rifleman and said to him: ‘Yes; but Dan, me boy, ye must ricollict that the squirrel had no gon in his hand to shoot back at ye.’ The young huntsman had not thought about that; but he doubtless found later on, as the marksmen of both armies did, that it made a vast difference in the accuracy of aim when those in front not only had ‘gons’ in their hands but were firing them with distracting rapidity. This rude Irish philosopher had explained in a sentence one cause of the wild and aimless firing which wasted more tons of lead in a battle than all its dead victims would weigh.”