They are well finished, compact, light, and pretty.
A Government Inspector, indeed, would be apt to make discoveries of
"malleable iron," which would cause their instant rejection, but which
in reality constitutes no ground of objection to guns whose parts are
not required to be interchangeable. They might be described as "well
adapted for ladies' use, or for boys learning to shoot;" but it gave me
a sickening sense of the inexperience of many a noble-hearted youth who
may have entered the service from the purest motives of patriotism, when
a dealer, who was exhibiting one of these parlor-weapons, with a calibre
no larger than a good-sized pea, informed me that he had sold a great
many to young officers, being so light that they could be carried slung
upon the back almost as easily as a pistol. It is with no such kid-glove
tools as these that so many of our officers have been picked off by
Southern sharp-shooters. At a long range they are useless; at close
quarters, which is the only situation in which an officer actually needs
fire-arms, a revolver is far preferable.
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