An Irishman was crouching on the border of a copse with an old, rusty, broken fire-lock in his hands, and his eyes intently and slyly fixed on a particular spot. A neighbor, happening to pass there, asked him what he was about.

‘Hush!’ said Pat, ‘a rabbit is coming out there presently, and I’ll pepper it, I tell you.’

‘What! pepper it with that thing! Why, you fool, your old gun hasn’t even got a cock.’

‘Hist, darling! the rabbit don’t know that.’

— Charles Carroll Bombaugh, The Book of Blunders, 1871