Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/44

20 navigated by the Thoreaus. In 1837 the two brothers were sportsmen, and went shooting over the Concord meadows and moors, but of course the &quot;buffalo&quot; was a figure of speech; they never shot anything larger than a raccoon. A few years later they gave up killing the game.

1em

,—Dost expect to elicit a spark from so dull a steel as myself, by that flinty subject of thine? Truly, one of your copper percussion caps would have fitted this nail-head better.

Unfortunately, the &quot;Americana&quot; has hardly two words on the subject. The process is very simple. The stone is struck with a mallet so as to produce pieces sharp at one end, and blunt at the other. These are laid upon a steel line (probably a chisel's edge), and again struck with the mallet, and flints of the required size