Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1895. 
I VOL. XLTV.— No. 23 
I No. 818 Broadway New York. 
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THE SECRET DEGREE OF THE SLAGLE. 
The Slagle Trout Club is a Michigan institution, with a 
membership list representing other States as well. It has 
a club house on Slagle Creek, a well-known trouting 
water near Henrietta, Mich., where the members resort 
for camping, fishing and working the degree of the Slagle. 
A copy of the by-laws has been received in this office. 
It is embellished with illustrations, one of which shows a 
Slagler photographed in the act of taking in a two- 
pounder; and another gives us a morning catch of some- 
thing like 150 fish to ten rods, good and sizeable trout they 
are, too. 
No picture is given of the degree of the Slagle. This is 
not wanting because the club photographer is inexpert 
with flash-light photography, but because the degree is a 
hidden mystery, a secret not to be divulged to the public 
eye. Of it we are informed with vagueness in Section 
XIII. of the by-laws, which reads as follows: 
Sec. XIII. The secret order or degree of "The Slagle" shall be 
conferred upon all members who join this club on and after May 1, 
1894, also upon all visitors; but the same shall not be conferred at any 
other time or place than at the camp or cottage of the club on the 
Slagle Creek, between the setting of the sun and midnight. The direc- 
tors of the club shall compose "The Grand Conference" during the 
ceremonies of the initiation of new members into the mysteries of the 
order of "The Slagle," who will be assisted by all the members 
present. 
Section XIV. provides that one who has received the 
degree of the Slagle and who incautiously or deliberately 
reveals it shall be expelled from the club. Further than 
this, the printed matter sent us affords no light on what 
manner of things this Slagle mystery, done betwixt sun- 
set and midnight, may be. The only two ways to learn 
more about it are to join the club or to get one's self invited 
to visit the scene of the nocturnal rites. But if the leaflet 
gives no inkling of the nature of the secret doings of the 
Slagles, it does afford a hint of their purpose, which, as 
here revealed, is seen to be not less crafty than com- 
mendable. 
Note, in the first place, that Section XIII. is mandatory 
and provides that "the secret order or degree of the Slagle 
shall be conferred upon * * * all visitors." Then 
take into account the resolution which is printed as a 
postscript to the leaflet: 
At the annual meeting for 1895 it was unanimously resolved that 
the last week in June (23d to 30th inclusive) and the last week in July 
(84th to Slst inclusive) be designated as "Family Weeks," and that 
each member be requested to observe the same by taking his family to 
the club cottage during those weeks. 
There you have it as clearly revealed as if the search- 
light of Farmer Dunn's tower on Broadway were turned 
full-beam upon the Slagle mystery makers at their work. 
For just consider. 
It is easy enough to adopt a resolution. This company 
of men get together and resolve to take each his wife and 
family into the woods in June and July. Quite simple. 
But it is one thing to resolve, and another to do. How 
shalj the brave resolvers make good their resolution ? By 
what persuasive art shall they induce their womenkind 
to pack off to the club house in the wilderness ? Happy 
thought — and he deserves to be Serene and Worshipful 
High King-pin of the Slagles all his life who suggested it 
—tell them there is a secret up there, and that if they 
will go it shall be told to them, and they must not tell it 
to anybody else. Will they go? Every mother and wife 
' and sister and daughter of them, so that on Slagle degree 
nights the club cottage shall not suffice to contain them, 
and the stream shall be lined on either side with tents to 
contain the overflow. 
So has come about the secret order of the Slagle. What 
its practical workings will be no man can tell. He 
might be a truthful, if ungallant, prophet who should 
prognosticate that by mid-summer the mystery of the 
Slagle would be mystery no longer. But what of that? 
The genius who invented the secrets of 1895 can assuredly 
get up a new batch of secrets for allurement in 1896. 
After that no more mystery will be required; for having 
been twice in camp these Michigan families will have 
fallen so completely under the spell of the woodland that 
thereafter annually they will long to go to the Slagle for 
its own sake, contemning as unworthy impulse their 
early motive of finding out the secret. 
We trust that the Slagle Trout Club may attain the 
high degree of success it is entitled to for its ingenious 
and praiseworthy device to extend the enjoyments and 
compensations of woods life to all the participants of its 
Family Weeks. 
HEALTH VS. BUSINESS. 
Apart from all considerations of sport, it is an essential 
part of a man's nature that he spend part of the time out 
of doors every year, if he would live up to the best capa- 
bilities of his being. It is a physical and mental necessity 
for him to do so. 
The life of many a busy man attests how unconsciously, 
yet thoroughly, one can become a drudge from long- 
continued habit. He becomes so habituated to his work 
that he grows to be a part of it. It blends with his being. 
He imagines that without him the work could not go on; 
that if he went away for a day or a week, everything 
would go wrong, and that loss or ruin would follow. 
He forgets that life at the best has limits, and that the 
natural limit may be shortened more or less by living 
under conditions which are too artificial and exacting for 
his well being. 
He forgets that if he takes a week or more this year for 
an outing in the woods he may be adding one year or ten 
years to his life. If he loses a week from business he 
may be with his business much longer at the finish, not 
to mention the better health, spirits a,nd capabilities 
gained from a rest in the open air. 
That one can unconsciously become merely an animated 
machine, from the force of habit established by following 
a fixed routine day after day and week after week, there 
are incidents connected with the life of every dweller in 
a city which testify. At some time, after a long stay 
penned within the walls of bricks, one goes into the 
country. At sight of the woods and the flowers and the 
green fields his spirits rise. He is delighted. He sniffs 
the fresh air with a sense of relief. He feels an independ- 
ence which is new to him. The music of the song birds 
has a sweetness unrivaled by any instrumental music. 
Those who have had the good fortune to have lived a 
camp life for a while in the woods, mountains or on the 
prairies, know what wonderful constitutional vigor is 
gained; what sound and sweet sleep has been theirs; what 
labors they could endure without fatigue, and what little 
sauce the coarsest food required, other than the sauce of 
hunger. It was all due to living nearer to nature's laws. 
After living in camp and having returned to town, how 
stuffy and close the rooms seemed; how hard it was to get 
steadied to business again; how easy it seemed for the 
business to go on while you were absent in the woods, and 
how you could remember a wider and better horizon than 
you had thought of before. 
But after days and weeks of routine, the force of habit 
begins to assert itself, life again blends with business, 
cares grow and are cumulatively carried along ; business 
cannot get along without you — and it is then time to go to 
the woods again. 
GUIDES AND ACTORS. 
"You may talk about your Indian woodcraft,'' said an 
actor, who is also an angler and does credit to both arts 
"but I know better. The last Indian guide I had in 
Canada was a specimen. He was near-sighted, partially 
deaf, and blessed with a gift of forever getting himself 
lost in the woods. It took all my time to see for him, 
hear for him, and show him the way back to camp. He 
had just one redeeming quality — he could cook." 
Guides are like actors. Some are good and others poor. 
There are more of the poor than the good. They are all 
human. This is something we often forget when making 
up the balance sheet. 
An Indian or white man, near-sighted, deaf and help- 
less in the woods, has no business to claim to be a guide, 
nor to take pay for his inefficiency from the sportsmen he 
has deceived into employing him, no more than an actor 
who cannot do his part deserves toleration on the boards. 
The incompetent guide often makes shift to play his little 
game of imposition and deceit successfully, since in the 
woods there is slight chance of recourse for the victim he 
has imposed upon. Once in the wilderness with a dis- 
honest guide, the employer usually resolves to make the 
best of it; and grumble as he may, he probably in the 
end pays the dishonest fellow the wages of a good man. 
The case of a poor actor is quite different. He is hissed 
off the stage, or the public holds aloof when he is billed 
to play, and his salary stops. 
Guides and actors, as has been said, are both human, 
and in their ways differ not essentially from the rest of 
men in merit and shortcoming. One may know next to 
nothing of the human body and still less of medicine, 
and be a doctor ; little of the law, and have a string of 
clients ; a pinch of theology, and preach ; a fine presence 
and make a brief strut on the stage. But probably there 
is no other occupation on earth in which so little knowl- 
edge is demanded, or experience, or natural aptitude, or 
acquired ability, as in the business of guiding, as that 
calling is followed by some self -breveted guides. And 
on the other hand, as there are physicians to whom the 
human frame is an open book and whose blessed skill 
brings back the sick from the grasp of death, as there are 
lawyers whose wisdom in counsel and resource in de- 
bate are the admiration of their clients, as there are 
learned divines and enthralling players, so are there guides 
wise in the hard learned craft of the woods, skilled in all 
wilderness ways, simple hearted, honest, true, manly 
men. If in your outing you have been so fortunate as to 
have tramped or paddled or packed with such a woods- 
man, though it were in years long gone, the memory of 
his companionship and comradeship is among the most 
lasting and cherished of all your wilderness reminis- 
censes. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Senators Chandler of New Hampshire, Piatt of Con- 
necticut and Proctor of Vermont have been off fishing 
together. If we are not mistaken, some of the members 
of this party were of the little band who used to gather in 
Washington, when the Forest and Stream reached that 
city, to listen to the reading of Mr. Robinson's "Uncle 
Lisha's Shop" chapters. That, we are bound to say, was 
a sensible way to spend a Washington evening; and to go 
fishing together is the most sensible way of spending the 
days of June. 
The most interesting bit of fishing news received this 
season comes from the Rangeleys; and records the taking 
of four trout aggregating twenty-four pounds, hooked 
and landed by Mrs. Charles W. Dunham, of Brattleboro, 
Vt. The largest fish weighed nine pounds, and its cap- 
ture consumed two hours and twenty minutes. The 
Brattleboro correspondent of the Springfield Republican 
says: "It is understood that Forest and Stream will 
illustrate the day's catch with a picture of Mrs. Dunham." 
Need we add that it would be a privilege and an honor to 
do so? 
That is an extremely interesting subject discussed by 
Mr. Horace Kephart, the food roots and herbs and nuts 
and berries. We trust that his notes may be supplemented 
out of the experience of others. 
Governor Morton has not yet (Tuesday, June 4) signed 
nor vetoed the Donaldson game-dealers' bill. His action 
in the matter is awaited with much interest by all friends 
of game protection, and it should have not less interest 
for every citizen of New York jealous of his own State's 
honor and its honorable dealing with other States. For 
this measure become a law will mean incitement to 
illicit game traffic not only in New York, but in every 
State tributary to New York cold storage houses, 
