GENERAL MARTIN MILLER. 123 



One winter, when the ice was exceptionally good, he 

 proposed a skating party to Hudson, some twenty-eight 

 miles down the river. We had an ice boat that some of 

 the boys built, and this was to go along to pick up strag- 

 glers and to return on. Cub Wilson sailed the boat. A 

 Greenbush boy of those days had little reverence and less 

 respect in his composition, and nicknames were com- 

 mon. Wilson was then about twenty-five years old, fat 

 and unwieldy, and had been called Cub from boyhood 

 and didn't mind it. He may have had a given name, 

 and no doubt his mother called him by it. The party 

 consisted of John Atwood, John and Hiram Stranahan, 

 Jerry Van Beuren, James Miles, Isaac Polhemus, John 

 Phillips, General Miller and myself, the youngest in the 

 party. We started in the morning about eight. A light 

 south wind was in our faces, and coats and overcoats 

 were soon piled on the ice boat. In places the ice was 

 too rough to skate, and once we took off the skates and 

 walked about half a mile. Phillips and the Stranahans 

 were the best skaters, and took the lead and kept it, 

 reaching Hudson some time ahead of us. Atwood, Van 

 Beuren and I brought up the rear. We did the stretch 

 in four and a half hours some claimed less time pretty 

 well tired and with numb feet. We all wore high boots. 

 The skates, with great turned-over prows ending in brass 

 acorns, were guttered in the bottoms, and strapped so 

 tightly over the foot that the blood could not circulate. 

 We did not think skating possible under any other con- 

 ditions. When the strap would not take up another 

 hole we drove wooden wedges between the strap and the 

 boot to make it tighter. A few years ago I tried on the 

 old style of skate and could get around a little, but could 

 do nothing with those of the present model. 



At Hudson General Miller took us to a hotel and we 



