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.


[Illustration: Fig. 1. The Old Truck in the Attic.]

[Illustration: Fig. 2. The Black Walnut Box.]



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 layout 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,