THE CELEBRATED RUSSIAN NOVELIST, TURGENIEFF.
The celebrated Russian author, Turgenieff, tells a touching incident from his own life, which awakened in him sentiments that have colored all his writings. When he was a boy of ten his father took him out one day bird-shooting. As they tramped across the brown stubble, a golden pheasant rose with a low whirr from the ground at his feet, and, with the joy of a sportsman, he raised his gun and fired, wild with excitement, when the creature fell fluttering at his side. Life was ebbing fast, but the instinct of the mother was stronger than death itself, and with a feeble flutter of her wings, the mother bird reached the nest where her young brood were huddled, unconscious of danger. Then, with such a look of pleading and reproach that his heart stood still at the ruin he had wrought (and never to his dying day did he forget the feeling of guilt that came to him in that moment), the little brown head toppled over, and only the dead body of the mother shielded her nestlings. “Father, father!” he cried, “what have I done?” as he turned his horror-stricken face to his father. But not to his father’s eye had this little tragedy been enacted, and he said: “Well done, my son; that was well done for your first shot. You will soon be a fine sportsman.” “Never, father: never again shall I destroy any living creature. If that is sport, I will have none of it. Life is more beautiful to me than death, and since I can not give life, I will not take it.”*—Our Dumb Animals.