REUBEN WOOD. 17 



or day, by flag or fire signal. This brings a sigh, not of 

 envy, but merely a wish that such conditions existed to- 

 day and I was "in it," as the saying goes. 



One day in the fall of 1857 a report came to Mr. Wells 

 that there were "rafts of ducks" on Cayuga Lake, one of 

 those numerous large lakes of Western New York lying 

 some thirty miles west of Syracuse, and a famous one for 

 ducks. He told Reub just in time for him to gather his 

 muzzle-loader and ammunition and get the next train 

 going to Cayuga, at the foot of the lake via the "old road" 

 of the New York Central R. R., a road then so slow that 

 it took the best part of a day to get there. Wells had his 

 camping outfit, and they camped for the night. As Reub 

 told me the story years afterward, daylight found him in 

 an old dugout, the only semblance of a boat at hand, while 

 Wells had a good place on the shore. The ducks were 

 flying down the lake and Wells had killed several, and 

 was signaling him to come and pick them up, when a 

 great flock of bluebills came up the stream and turned 

 directly over Reub's head. As he let both barrels go the 

 dugout somehow let him go into ice-cold water, but he 

 hung on to his gun and got ashore chilled to the bone, 

 and took the first train for Syracuse, where he traded his 

 gun and equipments for a Knight's Templar badge and 

 other things, and from that day foreswore the gun and 

 devoted his energies to wielding the rod. 



About this time Mr. Wells learned to fish with the fly 

 and taught Reuben the art, to which he became devoted. 

 It was long after this that I met Reuben, the occasion 

 being the tournaments of the New York State Associa- 

 tion for the Protection of Fish and Game, where he was 

 a frequent competitor in the fly-casting tournaments, but 

 never would allow himself or his brother Ira to win first 

 prize because of a chivalric idea that another competitor 



