480 



FOREST AND STREAM 



For Forest and Stream and Hod and (Jvn. 

 "J. M. S." SHOOTS QUAIL IN WEST 

 JERSEY. 



moraltzeb ajid reads rosseatj — ohimbo and the 

 Raiibits. 



I HAD spent a long day ^trying at the May's Landing 

 Circuit tbo casa of the Baroness Louisa Von Puchelstein 

 against the German Evangelical Lutheran Reformed Zion 

 Church. The Baroness boasted the blue blood of the House 

 of Hapsburg, or some other " burgh," and was endowed with 

 the qualifications which marks the excellent plaintiff— one 

 who goes in to win. 



The Baron Puchelstein, who wore " his wounds and honors 

 in front," as the poet said, from the bird's-eye view I had of 

 him, taken from the widow's locket, must have been a jolly 

 good fellow who could prove his doctrine orthodox 



" By apostolic blows ami Knocks." 

 He looked as if he might be descended from the Burgo- 

 masters of the days of William the Silent and the Count 

 HoogstTallen, spoken of by Motley in his Dutch Republic, 

 where he makes the Bitter Badavaro say of the Teuton of that 

 period : " If by any chance he woke up and found himself 

 sober he feared he was sick!" The Baroness claimed that 

 her late husband was marvellously successful as a pounder 

 and an expounder of the Gospel, and while ministering to 

 the spiritual wants of " the German Evangelical Lutheran 

 Reformed Zion Church of Egg Harbor City, N. J.," he had 

 also attended to the temporal wants of the " cod-ne-gugation," 

 and had the I. 0. L r . of the flock for $1,066.6", which, as 

 the declaration said, was yet due and owing to the plaintiff, 

 and that the defendant, the G. E. L. It. Z. Church, had 

 hitherto wholly neglected and refused to liquidate this small 

 indebtedness. 



If it is the perfection of art to appear natural, it is perfec- 

 tion itself to the mind of the Liber et Legates Homo to have a 

 client who can cry at the right time as the case progresses ; 

 so, when I described "the wild charge they made "—the 

 heroic 79th from Egg Harbor City at Chantilly— and how the 

 bloody Baron had to be lifted oil: his horse, and from thence 

 (later j into the Egg Harbor pulpit, bis interesting relict, the 

 Widow Baroness Puchelstein and Gluckstein, wept copiously 

 and the jury too, chiefly from along shore and ranging in the 

 latitude of Somer's Point, brought out their red bandanas to 

 wipe the glistening tenderness from either eye, and they 

 quickly brought in a verdict for the handsome Baroness of 

 $ 1, 606". 67 with costs to be faxed. The Baroness dried her 

 eyes on her lace mwhoir and bowed and smiled at the jury. 

 The jury also "smiled," but I think it was at "Veal's Hotel 

 across the way from May's Landing's antique courthouse. 

 The Baroness recovered her judgment rectus in curia, but 1 

 fear she will not get her money till the Day of Judgment 1 



All this is only a brief prelude to a conversation with his 

 Honor Burnett Vansyckle, one of the brightest minds of our 

 Supreme Court, who "can himself cast a fly secundmi artem, 

 or bring down the swift-winged woodcock in mid-air. Our 

 excellent Judge Vansyckle, the youngest man save one on 

 our Supreme Bench, was preceded by Judge Vandyke, the 

 father of T. S. Vandyke, Esq., whose pleasant memory while 

 among the Jerseys is recalled by his brilliantletteis in our own 

 For.EsT and Stkisam, which have so recently made his name 

 a household word among all generous lovers of Held sports. 

 Many were the words of wit and wisdom treasured up from 

 the judge's many-sided mind as we sat over our wine and 

 walnuts at home, or discussed the red-head or canvas-back 

 duck at the Hotel de Veal. 



Judge Vansyckle was talking about quail-shooting in old 

 Hunterdon, near Flemington. I insisted that there was no 

 county for quail shooting at all comparable to the Vineland 

 County (Cumberland County, N. J.). This the judge seemed 

 to doubt, and openly proclaimed himself a skeptic, when I 

 told him that my friend, Wm. B. Rosenbaum, a glass manu- 

 facturer at Malaga, frequently killed a hundred quails in a 

 day. 



" Well!" I replied, "Judge, what has been done can be 

 done again," well knowing the Judge's conscientious Presby- 

 terianism. I did not ventuie to bet with him as to the num- 

 ber of quails to be slaughtered in a day around Vineland, but 

 I insisted that I would have made such a bet had I been in 

 company outside of the Supreme Court. I promised to re- 

 port inside of a week what could be done at Malaga. 



The next day, having folded up " Ram on Pacts " and 

 " Sedgwick on the Measure of Damages," I left for home, 

 via. the Egg Harbor Pacific R. K., presided over by J. E. P. 

 Abbott, a man of note, which the wicked boys say runs only 

 a tri- weekly train, so-called because it runs up one day and 

 tries al! the next dav to get back. I adressed a letter to the 

 Hon. Wm. B. Rosenbaum, ex-member of the House, saying 

 that I would cheerfully accept his invitation, hitherto given, 

 to visit his hospitable home at Malaga, and test the power of 

 bis breech-loader, in our promised day's shooting among the 

 rabbits and the quail. ,W. B. R., prompt ever at the calls of 

 hospitality (for his ready toast at dinner wus that of Lord 

 Bolingbroko," "Friendship and Liberty") telegraphed back; 

 " Gome Thursday, equipped for a week's sport." The West 

 Jersey R. R. (which unites in one person a Superintendent 

 and a Senator, whose motto seems to be Sato Perpetuus- "Let 

 me be a Senator perpetually ") soon carried me to the village 

 of Malaga, in Gloucester Co., one of the sporadic settlements 

 peculiar to West Jersey, where patriarchal habits reign, and 

 —window glass is manufactured. 



" My sweet William,'-' as I was won't to call my friend w. 

 B . R. in the days when we went gypsing, was at. the depot 

 with his gray mare, and we were soon seated by a blazing log 

 fire in an old frame house, comfortable in all its appoint- 

 ments aglow with light and hospitality, like some of the old 

 farm houses in which I used to spend Sunday at Tipton, Ten- 

 nessee, in the anti-bellum days. 



Rosenbaum began to talk of pre-Eaphckte painting, but I 

 incontinently snubbed him by suggesting that being hungry, 

 pout- prandial conversation would better suit my ideas of 

 '• High Art " about that particular bom-. 



Hospitable as a prince, Rosenbaum called " Chimbo," as 

 ike- much be- kicked and be-cuffed Scipio-Africanus was called, 

 and ordered him to put on the dinner. There was an entire 

 lack of ceremony, but no lack of all the substantial and 

 delicacies which would have made Rabelais himself never 

 more complain of his " bad quarter of an hour." 



Dinner over, we devoted ourselves to gun talk and congratu- 



lated West Jersey on the surprising advantages accruing 

 from the Game Protective Society under the 

 care of Major Walker (a regular), and of Judge R. T. 

 Miller, who is as familiar with a breech-loader as he 

 is well versed in the sinuosities and angularities of Black- 

 stone. I suggested to W. B. R. that one of our judges, 

 to put it mildly, " damned with faint, praise," my oft-recur- 

 ring plaudits on the "substantive fact" that he and Rich- 

 mond had more than once bagged 100 quail in a single day in 

 and around the Vineland tract. 



" Far be it from me," said the elegant William, "to [make- 

 up a case against the Supreme Court, for they have had more 

 or less to do with my affairs for some years, but I'll just bet 

 my retriever's fine head against the Judge's annual salary 

 (say $10,000) that we will bag 100 birds before sunset to- 

 morrow." I saw the Dutch blood of my good friend was up. 

 I was pleased and knew there was (bird) music in the air. 

 " Sweet William " sent Chimbo down the lane after George 

 Richman and said that he must rout us out at 5 o'clock in the 

 morning and have the dogs ready, because he meant to let 

 them slip and cry "havoc" among the partridge in and 

 around every buckwheat field between Nat. Chews' .house 

 and North Vineland. 



Kichmond said everything was ready, and that we must 

 breakfast with him. I insisted that, early rising was never 

 invented for sportsmen ; that Sancho Panza was correct in 

 saying " Blessed be sleep for it covers me all over like a 

 cloak." 



But 1 made a tremendous effort, to be up with the 

 lark, and Chimbo did not call us in vain. We rose 

 The country never looked more beautiful as we left the vil- 

 lage, with three dogs in our open wagon, all of us armed and 

 equipped as the law directs, with Chimbo at the tail-end of 

 the wagon, carrying a huge home-made sack, a cross between 

 a haversack and a knapsack, and a smile reaching from ear to 

 ear. 



The country is as level as a barn door, and the piping of 

 the quail could be heard in the gray of the dawn along the 

 roadside ; but it was no sporadic or nomadic partridge that 

 sweet William was gunning for that November day. He 

 made the driver strike for the nearest buckwheat field, for 

 well we knew jBob White there most did congregate. 



I was to be taught to slay " the partridge in the mountain," 

 for in India, so Stevens says in his "Travels in the Holy 

 La nd ," quail have their habitat in the mountain, hence the 

 soubriquet formerly given to one of our local statesmen, the 

 " Mountain Partridge." 



I had not concealed the fact, that I had struck with a Min- 

 nie rifle at 200 yards the bounding deer on the banks of the 

 Mississippi, and had filled a boat (a big canoe) with wild 

 geese on the Arkansas bottoms ; but an expert on quail 

 (except quail on toast) with timt expert, swordsman and 

 soldier, M. E. F., at the League, I did not claim to be. 



The deig stood still, a study for Whistler, or some other 

 artist, and soon two birds got up from the high grass, and 1 

 sighed with inward satisfaction, as 1 blazed away with a 

 single barrel, to see one drop twenty yards away. I was 

 saved from absolute disgrace in the sight of my two gunners 

 of the period, Richman and W. B. R., who began to think I 

 was not so green with a gun as I looked. Then the fun grew 

 last and furious. In a little patch of woods Richuian's dog 

 routed a covey, ten in number, and it took half an hour tokils 

 nine of them; for the other one I begged a cessation of hol- 

 tilities, and we left him to the tender mercies of the game 

 protective society. And I would here timidly suggest to that 

 society, whose directors are my friends, that " Lehigh must 

 do better " than some of their recalcitrant officers or agents 

 have done recently; for one of these took a couple of dozen 

 brook trout down to the Elmer .Mill Pond to stock it, and 

 by some accident or design or obfuscatlon of the moral or di- 

 gestive faculties he had the trout of the W. J. G. Protective 

 Society cooked for breakfast! The agent of the W. J. G. P. 

 Society stocked his stomach at the expense of the Mill Pond ! 

 Such conduct as this ought, surely, to be reported to Seth 

 Green, Roosevelt, or some other high piscatorial mandarin ! 



Richman must have had a spice of a Corkonian or Far-down 

 Celt in him, for his wit was fragrant of the shamrock, and 

 he amused himself by hummiug " A Lady Lived in Leith," 

 etc.. while Sweet William was steadily (as a sleuth-hound 

 trailing a deer) following through briar and brake each fugi- 

 tive quail. 



Woe betide the bird that escaped the Westley Richards 

 of the glass manufacturer, and none escaped unless 

 it rose in Hie dim woods or from out the crowded saplings, 

 thick ae gravel in a fountain of July. The bird escaping 

 Sweet William's deadly aim was sure to fall before Richuian's 

 breech-loader. He never missed. 



In going from one held to another two birds rau across the 

 road. I blazed away; both dropped. 



"Why in thunder don't you let 'em get upf" said W. B. 

 R., disgustedly. 



" Get up !" said I, "I wanted 'em to get down !" 



By this time my score had reached eight, and we paused a 

 few moments to take a light lunch beneath the nearest persim- 

 mon tree, and a square reckoning counted thirty-eight birds. 

 It was only high noon. Rosenbaum was a light, wiry fellow, 

 all sinews, with not an ounce ot spare meal on hira, but he 

 could travel all day, and like "Old Virginny Never Tire." 

 His equal in forest or stream or with rod and gun I have 

 never met, whether in the Adirondack woods or among the 

 Jersey buckwheats, 



My fighting weight is now 203, was then 200, and I filed a 

 demurrer to this perpetual tramp, tramp, and gently urged 

 Richman and W. B. R. to move on the enemy's works while 

 I paused beneath the umbragious persimmon— for repose. 



It was a heavenly day. There was that warm, sympathetic 

 silence in the ah which gives the Indian summer days almost 

 a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate haze that seemed 

 only the kindly air made visible. It was a philosopher's day, 

 and as the enthusiastic gunners disappeared over the brow of 

 half a hill— a gentle elevation — I mused while the sun shone. 

 The dead birds were spread before me, and gentle Ellas' lines 

 sang themselves in my memory : 



" I have bad playmates, I have 

 Bad companions: 

 In my days of childhood 

 In my Joyful school days ; 

 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 

 Some, they have died, and some, 

 They have left me, 

 And some are taken from me,— 

 Ail are departed, 

 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." 



Rosenbaum rudely broke my reverie, he sitting on the top 

 rail of a Free-lover's fence iu the Vineland Settlement, and I 

 quietly reposing, with Chimbo at my feet, lazily tying the 

 quails up with a string. He yelled : 



" I say, old boy, get out of that ! I thought you came here 



to shoot birds, not to study out a speech for your next, muidei 

 case." 



I stunned him with a rejoinder from Rutherford Institute, 

 thus : "I say, Bill ! do you think perfect slavery is 

 lion to give all our labor for a supply of the Oare necessities of 

 Ufa?" 



" Have I not lunched by the side of your frugal knapsack ? 

 O, who would fardels bare or chase the flying quail on such a 

 day as this— a very bridal of the earth and sky ! I seek re- 

 pose. O, mighty Nim 



"Bridle be d— ashed d— ashed!" said Rosenbaum, "I 

 thought you wa3 a gunner, not a philosopher." 



He laughingly shook his finger at me, whistled for his 

 retriever, and was soon over the field and far away, striking 

 a fresh covey every ten minutes, for I never saw such a 

 country for birds, and never heard of one as prolific , for the 

 long-haired denizens of C. K. Lambs' earthly Paradise (?) are 

 more given to trimming the midnight lamp, ameliorating the 

 woes of mankind, or teaching the young idea how to shoot, 

 than to shooting themselves. They may be vegetarians ; 

 gunners they abominate. 



I could not feel the stirring of my wings, and yet I soared. 

 The shooting of the quail became to me the "slaughter of the 

 innocents." Chimbo seemed fascinated with the deep ten- 

 derness in the atmosphere, or more likely with pure boyish 

 African cussedness, and after scooping up a big drink from a 

 cool spring almost at the loot of my persimmon tree, he, 

 like Knickerbocker's Mynheer Van Tassel, after a full dinner, 

 fell over asleep on a couch kindly Minerva, or some more- 

 kindly cow, had prepared for him. 



I pulled out of my shooting-jacket pocket my London edi- 

 tion of the " Confessions of J. J. Rosseau, citizen of Geneva," 

 on the fly-leaf of which I had written when a ci ill* 

 old Hanover, on the banks of the beautiful river, the Ohio, 

 the heroic words of the much-suffering, much-enduring, 

 much-loving and prophetic citizen and scholar, lover and 

 patriot : " This is what I have done and what I abide by." 



I sat drinking in the air, satisfied with the mere sense of 

 existence— an air as pure and as Italian as a January morning 

 on the Ocklawaha, in Florida. I drank in also what Chimbo 

 had brought me iu a cup made ot leaves -a draught from 

 my little spring, and awaited the coming of my companions, 

 who, heated with the chase, had gone far out of sight and 

 hearing. 



On every liri.chi rliere lira repose— 

 Here waa rest, not warfare. 



My gun was forgotten as I read from the "Confessions" 

 words so in accord with my mood that Jean Jacques might 

 have written them himself here beneath the persimmon tree 

 in Cumberland County. He says in the fourth book of the 

 " Confessions:" 



" Although I have for several years past been frequently 

 in the country, I seldom had enjoyed much of its pleasures . 

 and these exclusions, always made in company with people. 

 who considered themselves as persons of consequence and in- 

 sipid by constraint, served to increase in me the natural desire 

 I had for rustic pleasures. The want of these was 

 sensible to me, as I had the image of them immediately before 

 my eyes. 1 was so tired of saloons jets <f eaus, groves, par- 

 terres, and of the more fatiguing persons by whom ihcy 

 were shown; so exhausted with pamphlets,' harpsichords, 

 trios, uuravellings of plots, stupid bon mote, insipid affecta- 

 tion, pitiful story tellers and great suppers, that, when I gave 

 a side glance at a poor, simple hawthorne bush, a hedge, a 

 barn or a meadow ; when in passing through a hamlet 1 

 scented a good cheivil omelette and heard at a distance the 

 burden of the rustic song of the Bisquicres, I wished all 

 rouge, furbelows and amber at the d— 1, and envying I he din- 

 ner of the good housewife and the wine of our own vineyard", 

 I h artily wished to give a slap on the chops to Monsieur le 

 Chef and Monsieur le Maitre, who made me dine at the 

 hour of supper and sup when 1 should have been asleep ; but 

 especially to Messieurs the lackeys, who devoured with their 

 eyes the morsels I put into my mouth, and, upon pain of dy- 

 ing with thirst, sold me the adulterated wine of their masters, 

 ton times dearer than that of a better quality would have 

 cost me at a public house " 



The sun had beguQ to go down toward the baths of all the 

 western stars, when Chimbo, forgotten by me, suddenly ex- 

 claimed : 



Boss! what dal? what dat?" Through the bushes I 

 spied the white tail of a rabbit, and forgetting Erwin, Diderot, 

 Rosseau and all his loves and woes, 1 let drive at the rabbit 

 fifty yards away. Chimbo gathered him in, and gathering up 

 our scattered munitions of war, we crossed the road into an 

 apple orchard, and from thence into a stubble field which 

 promised well. Here I did my best shooting, and by crossing 

 and recrossing the field twice, for the birds were very tame", 

 I increased my bird count to seventeen. This satisfied me, 

 and Chimbo devoted the balance of the afternoon to rabbits 

 iu a briar patch, aud without a dog. As the sun wem. down 

 the sky we had abundance of sport, rarely mi&BiQg and sooi 

 counted seven rabbits, which made an elegant sufficiency. 

 We heard our companions firing nearly a mile up the road. 

 Chimbo gathered up the game, his burnished ivory visible ai 

 every step, hitched up the horses and we turned their heads 

 homeward. Rosenbaum and Richman, wearied at last, sat at, 

 the foot of a big oak tree by the roadside. It was a sight to 

 sec. When we counted the spoils we had one hundred and 

 twenty-eight quail andseven rabbits. How joyfully we drove 

 home. How our skipping spirits danced would take an hour 

 to tell, and time wanes, liosenbaum said his affida- 

 go before the court to detail our day's labor. Richman de- 

 clared if his lic.-.t day. 



Judge Vansyekle's circuit was changed to North Jersey, 

 and I mot him no more till the midsummer vacation, when I 

 encountered his smiling face at the Grand Union Hotel, Sara- 

 toga. His first salutation was 



"J. M. S., you never reported the amount of Malaga quail 

 you bagged in" November." 



"Welb Judge," I replied, "we beat the best score ever 

 made in that county. We killed, three, of us, in one day, 

 from sunrise to sunset, one bund red and twenty-eight birds, 

 and divided them, like ' all Gaul was divided,' into three 

 parts," 



The Judge looked amazed. He was too polite to say so, 

 but his looks plainly said : "There seems to be a flavor of Eli 

 Perkins about this thing!" 



I saw the "doubting Thomas" stamped upon the judicial 

 face, a reflex from the judicial mind, and I produced the fol- 

 lowing affidavit, which forever silenced all cavil on that 

 question, and has come to be regarded as good and sufficient 

 evidence, and as Rabelais says, " Oats!" t " Uy Alackins ; 

 oats is evidence in the case." ) It is as follows: 

 "Cuui:t:r.LA>;n CorxTr, aa.: 



" William B. lcosentuuui (glass manufacturer), of full age, on hii 

 oath saith, thaton the fifteenth day of No. leponeat, to- 



gether wit ti one •lames M. Seovel and George itlchumn, did tin, Dag 



