o pick up. Down in one corner of the trunk was a black walnut box,
marked, with brass letters, "Property of the S. S. I. E. E. of W. C. I."
On my key-ring I still carried the key to that box, which had not been
opened for years. I unlocked the box and brought to light the "Records
and Chronicles of the Society for the Scientific Investigation,
Exploration and Exploitation of Willow Clump Island." For hours I pored
over those pages, carried back to the good old times we used to have as
boys along the banks of the Delaware River, until I was brought sharply
back to the present by the sound of the dinner bell. It seemed that the
matter contained in those "Chronicles" was too good to be kept locked up
in an old trunk. Few boys' clubs ever had such a president as Bill, or
such a wonderful bureau of information as Uncle Ed. For the benefit of
boys and boykind in general, I decided then and there to publish, as
fully as practicable, a record of what our society did.

CHRISTMAS VACATION.

This was how the society came to be formed. Bill, whom I met at
boarding-school, was an orphan, and that's why he was sent to
boarding-school. His uncle had to go down to Brazil to lay out a
railroad, I believe, and so he packed Bill off to our school, which was
chosen in preference to some others because one of the professors there
had been a classmate of Uncle Ed's at college. Bill roomed with me, and
naturally we became great chums. When Christmas time came, of course I
invited him to spend the holidays with me. My home was situated in the
little village of Lamington, on the Jersey side of the Delaware River.
Here we arrived late at night on the Saturday before Christmas. A cold
wind was blowing which gave promise of breaking the spell of warm
weather we had been having, and of giving us a chance to try our skates
for the first time. True to our expectations, the next day was bitterly
cold, and a visit to the canal which ran along the river bank, just
beyond our back fence, showed that quite a thick skim of ice had formed
on the water. Monday morning, bright and early, found us on the smooth,
slippery surface of the canal. "Us" here includes, in addition to Bill
and myself, my two younger brothers, Jack and Fred, and also Dutchy Van
Syckel and Reddy Schreiner, neighbors of ours. It was the custom at the
first of December every year to drain out most of the water in the
canal, in order to prevent possible injury to the canal banks from the