Advice for life
BERENGER, Lt. Col. Baron. Helps & Hints: How to Protect Life and Property, with Instructions in Rifle and Pistol shooting etc. London: T. Hurst. 1835.
8vo. Original green textured cloth, titled in gilt to spine; pp. viii, 286, [2]; a very good copy with some minor wear to the outer covers and hinges, occasional foxing throughout and to the folding plate, a few creases but most of the internal text and images are unusually clean, with the bookplate of R. J. Dickinson to the front paste down endpaper and an inscription to the front free endpaper.
Helps and Hints is a handbook on personal defence and gunmanship. In lieu of a long description, I offer to you the following entries from the index which I think better illustrate the contents than I could hope to.
Accidents with cabs, fatality from, prevented by talking to the horse, 63, 64.
[…] silly French mode of rifling, & c., 207
Burglars, how to conduct yourself towards, 246.
Cold, from wet feet, how to guard yourself against, 109.
Cow, how to act if attacked by, 2040, 246.
Daggers not fit for Englishmen, 108.
Eject out of a room, how to, any one with certainty, 168, 169.
Fagging, the custom of, lamented, 174.
Fist, its use national and manly, 128.
[and many more…]
The text is illustrated with entertaining woodcuts demonstrating several modes of defence in which gentleman see off dastardly robbers with unlikely feats of dexterity.
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