I must impress on my readers that puppies can hardly be kept too well. They must have little or no meat during their puppyhood, but plenty of milk and oatmeal, the latter always to be well boiled. Feed them three times a day for the first three or four months, and twice a day till nine months old. After that one good meal a day is sufficient.
A large volume might be written how to keep and feed dogs, on kennels, &c. This has often been done before; but things are now altered, and we must keep pace with the times.
I have never been able to afford an expensive shooting, and being abroad from the time I was twenty-one till I was middle-aged, I never had the chance; but, coming over to England every year, as I did, and shooting in all parts, it enabled me to know the localities, and where shooting at a reasonable price was to be had.
It is a large house and servants that swallow up one's income. A bachelor sportsman only requires a sitting-room and a bed-room, with his tub in some corner or outhouse close at hand.
There is nothing I like more than a real sportsman's den. There he has his guns, his rods, his different sporting paraphernalia, his pipes, his cigars, his powder and ammunition, and everything handy. As I am writing this I can see all my traps around me. I am rather proud of my sanctum. I have a place for everything, and everything in its place. My books--of which I have some hundreds of volumes--are before me. On one side of the wall are all my fishing things; over the mantelpiece, on racks, are my guns, and a goodly collection of pipes; in a three-cornered cupboard all my ammunition, and some hundreds of cartridges; in another cupboard are cigars, and odds and ends; in another a lot of nets, and a sort of fixed washing-stand; two luxurious old-fashioned arm-chairs on either side of my fire-place, into which I can pop and take a smoke when I am tired of writing. And at this present moment there are three setters and a couple of Dandie Dinmonts curled up on the hearth-rug before my fire; but my dogs are always clean in their habits; if not, they would not find a place in my room. The rain is pattering against my windows, and it is a wild wet night; but still I am contented, and looking out for to-morrow, when I am going to have a day's rabbit-shooting, and beat a favourite snipe marsh.