American Fisheries Society. 49 



still watches of the night, he i^laced a freight train on our track 

 and let us run into it full speed. I have secret information that 

 he was at the hottom of that whole thing. (Laughter.) 



Mr. ^leehan : I had to give you some excitement. 



Mr. Brooks: I fortunately esca])cd that and came on here, 

 and he then tried to kill me with good cheer, but he found out 

 that by good treatment 1 only prospered. So to-day he took me 

 out on this beautiful lake out here and gave me a pleasant out- 

 ing, very pleasant — most of the time. (Laughter.) He showed 

 us how the nets were taken up and how the fish were secured— - 

 very few of them I must say — he will have to come down to 

 Maryland in order to get many fish. Then he showed us how 

 they were put down. But for some reason some of the members 

 of the party did not feel very comfortable, and when I appealed 

 to the commissioner, his treatment of me w^as not what I ex- 

 ]3ected. I wanted him to give me something to do me some good, 

 to raise my drooping spirits ; instead of that he sang the old song 

 to me. The quotation was applicable, Commissioner Meehan. 

 And the commissioner said to me : "There are plenty of fish down 

 in the brook ; all you need is a line, a rod and hook." I believed 

 him that there were plenty of fish, and all wanted to come out 

 very badly. I had a most uncomfortal)le time. The commis- 

 sioner found that I even survived that trip out on the lake, and 

 to add insult to injury, he gave me no ticket to-night to this 

 banquet, expecting me to go supperless to l)ed. if any of you 

 can explain that treatment I shall ))e very glad to have you do 

 so. (Applause.) 



Toastmaster : I will leave it to any man in this room whether 

 or not he deserves a ticket to this banquet, because while we were 

 out on the boat and while he was uncomfortable, I oflEered him 

 a good plump, fat ham sandwich, and he rejected it. (Laugh- 

 ter.) After that, naturally I su])posed he didn't want any sup- 

 per or dinner. 



The hour is growing late, and we have some other work to do, 

 but we have one or two speakers who should have something to 

 say about things of interest. Among other things, it has been 

 a well known fact that for many years the iVmerican Fisheries 



