screw-driver.

ed the fastening operation was needed to release the screws, and it is by no means surprising that it could not be readily found. The victim of the joke did not miss the train, but he had a very narrow

escape.

The tool that had perform- | Long Island, with a yacht that has won several prizes in club races, and beaten all her competitors on Great South Bay, the old Olympians are never weary of recounting the happy times of two or three decades ago, and the fun they had when they performed their own work, and depended on their own exertions for subsistence. Perhaps no one of them would be willing to see the whirligig of time rolled backward to the days of boyhood, and probably every man of them would wince a little if told that it was his turn to fill the water barrel or cook the dinner. But they are all thoroughly alive to the pleasures of memory, and their narrations are by no means uninteresting to the juniors that have come after them.

Holes were bored in the chairs and benches whereon the Olympians were wont to sit, and then a member with a mechanical turn of mind rigged up an arrangement of strings and pins that was calculated to make a sensation. A man would be thrown off his guard, and induced to rest on the fatal seat; while calmly conversing about the latest Emersonian poem, or discussing the proper rendering of a line of Homer, he would be impelled upward by a force as powerful as it was invisible, and his musings would possibly terminate with the lines:

66

"I see a voice you can not feel,

Which says I must not stay."

66

During the period when this entertainment was popular, the Olympians were accustomed to be oft in the attitude of a banqueting party drinking a toast to the memory of Washington. Standing and in silence" was the motto, for no one dared to sit on a chair or bench, through fear that it had been all too recently in the hands of the mechanical genius with the pins. "But you can't be a tree, and stand up all your life," said one of the boys, and we'd better quit this sort of thing." And after a discussion of the pros and cons it was agreed that the game should be played no more. The flight of time brought age and dignity to the members of the club, and sprinkled their heads with the snow that never melts, unless through the aid of hair-dye. With dignity, and gray hairs, and in many instances corpulence, the fondness for boyish pranks and rough joking passed away, and now the lounger may take his ease in hammock undisturbed, or sit or lounge where he chooses, sans peur et sans reproche.

And the reference to that water barrel is a reminder of a curious discovery which has an amusing side. For years the water for all the purposes of the Olympic's kitchen was brought from a spring a good half mile away. It was no joke to haul the barrel along the sandy road; and many a time did members make remarks more forcible than elegant when told that it was their turn to fill the cask. It was thought useless to dig for water on the club grounds, and when the managing committee determined to try the experiment, it was pronounced a waste of money. The well was made by driving an iron pipe to a depth of twenty-five feet or more, and when the pump was started, it brought up the purest and sweetest water that one could wish to drink. The supply is inexhaustible.

Since the early part of the century Long Island has been famous among lovers of sport for its abundance of trout, deer, and other game; and the ease of reaching it from New York made its brooks and forests popular with the hunting denizens of Manhattan. Long before the railway was constructed, gentlemen from New York and Philadelphia used to make frequent visits to the township of Islip in search of amusement, and rarely did they come away disappointed. Snedecor's hotel, on the old stage-road, was the resort of these Nimrods and Piscators, and merry were the nights they passed under his roof. Lif was in due

Lif

With their commodious quarters, comprising parlor, dining-rooms, some thirty odd rooms for sleeping purposes-many of them with fittings superior to those of the best of our summer hotels-with kitch-time gathered to his fathers, and then the en and servants' quarters, ice-houses and store-rooms for provisions, with grounds laid out in lawn and garden, and boasting a pretty grove of the well-known oaks of

hotel was kept by his son, until about the year 1865, when the owners of the property determined to sell it. The prospect of losing their favorite resort was not a

consequently each member is the owner of an undivided hundredth of the property. Fifty thousand dollars was the original valuation of the property, and the par value of a share was five hundred dollars. When a member dies or resigns in good standing, his interest is treated like a share of a bank or railway, with the difference that the purchaser must be acceptable as a member of the club.

pleasing one to the hunters and fishers, | hundred. The club, as a corporation, and thereupon they formed an associa- owns the ground and its belongings, and tion with the prime object of purchasing the property, and keeping it in the shape most agreeable to them. The association took very naturally the form of a club, and in 1866 it was chartered under the name of "The South-side Sportsmen's Club of Long Island," and under that name it exists to-day. The purchase included about eight hundred acres of land, partly under cultivation and partly wild, and a fine pond and stream where trout can be cultivated and caught. The old hotel and its out-buildings were a part of the acquisition, and in front of the hotel was a mill in a state of severe dilapidation. In the hands of the directors of the club the property has been greatly improved; and though the former hotel is the club-house of to-day, it has undergone so many alterations and received so many additions that it resembles the boy's jackknife that was the old knife still, though it could boast of two new handles and five new blades.

The first article of the constitution of the association says, "This club is established for the protection of game birds and fish, and for the promotion of social intercourse among its members;" and thereby hangs a history. It is to the South-side Club that the public is indebted for many of the laws protecting game, not only on Long Island, but throughout the State, and not only for the laws, but for the sentiment in favor of game protection everywhere. When the club determined that a law was needed, it set about to secure its passage; one of the ablest lawThe membership includes many prom-yers in the State has been counsel for the inent gentlemen of New York and other cities, and their number is limited to one

club since the year of its organization, and when he devoted himself to the framing

of a bill, it was generally so closely framed watchers were out on patrol, and espied that a mosquito could not creep through it. When the club was organized there was great lawlessness among the LongIslanders relative to game, and the few statutes in existence were little heeded, or heeded not at all. Poachers were numerous, and as fast as the club stocked its pond and stream with trout, the poachers would fish them out. In consequence of this free-and-easy practice of the natives the club secured the passage of a law fixing a penalty of five dollars fine and three months in the county jail for tak

the doughty appropriator of fish comfortably at work. He was at a bend in the stream, over a deep hole, where the young trout of that season's hatching loved to congregate, and had evidently set about his business in earnest. With a net of fine mesh he insnared the little troutlings, and then placed them in some wide-mouthed demijohns which he had standing ready. All day the watchers watched him. They were determined to "get him dead to rights," and so they did not make their presence known till night

ing a trout from a private preserve without the permission of the owner. Men were employed to patrol the banks of the stream and pond; but as the stream ran through the forest for a mile or so, the poachers were still able to ply their trade and defy the law. There was one among them who boasted loudly of his prowess as a stealer of fish, and he did not hesitate to tell the members of the club that they might breed trout as fast as they chose, and he would have them all.

But the king of the poachers came to grief. One morning two of the club's

fall, when he folded his net like the Arab, and would silently steal away. Then they came forth, and laid violent hands on poacher and demijohns, and as they were two watchers to one poacher, and the demijohns were neutral, they had the best of it. The young trout were returned to the stream, but not till they had been carefully counted, and found to number four thousand and odd.

The proper affidavits were made, and Mr. Poacher saw trouble ahead. Not to speak of the odd trout, and dealing only with a round four thousand, the situation

the club has made provision for canine entertainment, and there is a Master of the Hounds, whose duty it is to enforce all the rules, regulations, and by-laws relative to hunting. There is a Master of the Fish, who has control over the piscatorial sport, and direct supervision of the hatching and breeding boxes, and all that

mode of using it. It was determined to play a joke on him, and to this end two of the members went out in the evening, took a couple of ducks from the ice-house, and then discharged their guns at the surface of the pond. The shots brought out Mr. Verdant, and as the jokers walked leisurely up from the pond with the dripping ducks in their hands, he was anxious to know where they obtained their game.

"Out here in the pond," was the reply. "We shot them by firing at the phosphorescent light on their feathers." Verdant was told that there were plen

pertains to the cultivation and preservation of fish, the finny game.

The game sports of the club are not limited to fish, birds, and animals; they include billiards, whist, and other light

THE BALLYHOO BIRD.

amusements, boat-races on the pond, and | ty more of the same sort, and immediateoccasional pranks played by the members on each other. New and verdant members are frequently entertained with stories of hunting and fishing that would put Baron Munchausen to the blush, and make a severe strain on the swallowing capacities of an anaconda. On one occasion there was a new member who had equipped himself with all the latest hunting gear, but was not well versed in the

ly went for his gun. When he came out, all armed for the fray, his attention was directed to the moonbeams dancing on the water, which was gently ruffled by a light breeze. On the assurance that the light came from the phosphorescence of a duck's feathers, he fired; and as another light was seen following the splash, he fired again.

Then he took a boat and rowed out in