PORTER TYLER. 51 



gunpowder had never been made. The true game birds 

 hold their own in many places fairly well only men of 

 intelligence can find them but in the older settled re- 

 gions the redheaded woodpecker has gone and the brown 

 thrasher and bobolink have almost disappeared. The 

 reason is a combination of gun and boy. 



Game that Port didn't sell he cooked for small parties 

 at his house. He was a good cook, and when it was 

 known that he had a few ruffed grouse on hand a supper 

 party would be organized at once, and he would furnish 

 everything but the liquors. He was a very temperate 

 man and seldom used either wines or stronger stuff, and 

 said that he did not care to sell it even if he had license to 

 do so; but the jolly old cocks who were fond of his game 

 suppers did not allow themselves to suffer on this account. 

 I attended only one of these affairs, as I was rather young 

 for that sort of thing; but I had been out after grouse and 

 had three, which I gave to Porter, whom I met near home. 

 The cause of this generosity was because I did not dare to 

 take them home, having surreptitiously borrowed a fine 

 double gun from my father which I was forbidden to take 

 or handle; but, as he never used it, he often loaned it to 

 me without his knowledge. Under these conditions Por- 

 ter got the birds and I was invited to the feast. General 

 Martin Miller, of the State militia, presided; in times when 

 Greenbush was at peace with all foreign countries he kept 

 a grocery store and was commonly known as Mat. Miller; 

 Tobias Teller, Bill Fairchild, Godfrey Rhodes, Port and 

 I fourteen of us in all, six men and eight grouse. After 

 the last bone had been polished Bill Fairchild was 

 thoughtful, and as he was sucking away on the backbone 

 of a grouse, trying to extract the very last of the bitter that 

 is so dear to the lover of all kinds of grouse, he asked: 



"Porter, did you ever eat a muskrat?" 



