I saw a real hunter a few months ago (1908). He was a Eurasian, in
Burma, living from hand to mouth. His clothes were of the roughest,
poor fellow, and his appearance showed he had to live very barely. The
police said that he was kept alive by his patient mother, who "allowed
him to sponge upon her." A passion for hunting had withdrawn him from
other occupations. The deer in the woods, along the muddy coast, and
the rewards for an occasional leopard or tiger, I was told, enabled
him to buy ammunition and a little food. He came before me with his
companions, some idle vagabond Burmans of like tastes, because, it was
alleged, when other game failed, they had decided to become hunters of
men--in plain words, they were robbers. As I unravelled the tangled
threads of his history, I saw in it what any man, who has developed
healthily, can read in his own consciousness, a summary of human
evolution from hunting to stealing. From stealing to working is the
next step. The hunters shall soon be all vanished from the earth; but
the thieves shall be with us yet awhile.