FOREST AND STREAM 
761 
These Are the Weapons That Were Pointed at Our Grandfathers to Enforce the Demand, 
“Money or Your Life.” 
The Hunters of Men 
By S. Allen, Charing Cross, London. 
added. It will be noted that the forearm has 
been left as long as possible. If the comb of this 
rifle could be made higher and if the stock was 
lengthened one-half inch the arm would be great¬ 
ly improved. The lengthening of the stock is a 
simple matter which one can do himself or get 
a gunsmith to do for him at slight expense. 
Some will question the advantage of adding 
six inches to the length of the barrel, and pos¬ 
sibly they are right; however, you will notice 
the rifle has Lyman sights, that the distance be¬ 
tween them is long, and as my friend Pope, who 
is a great hunter as well as crack shot, remarked 
with a smile, “With a long barrel you don’t have 
to shoot so far.” 
With the exception of checking and a pistol 
grip almost any owner of a Springfield can re¬ 
model his rifle along the lines shown, although it 
will bother him to properly fit and glue thin wal¬ 
nut strips between the barrel and forearm. This 
space is disclosed when one takes off the upper 
wood hand-guard and you can cut up the hand- 
guard to make the strips. 
I have remodeled a Springfield recently, the 
only articles required being a small plane, wood 
rasp, wood file, various grades of sandpaper, saw, 
hack saw, screw driver, punch, sharp jackknife, 
and linseed oil. Furthermore, I lengthened the 
stock by sawing it in two near the butt-plate 
and using three pieces of belt leather, each one- 
eighth inch thick. When nicely finished this belt 
leather looks like the beginning of a Silver’s re¬ 
coil pad. You will need a hand drill, two drill 
points, a countersink and four long slender 
screws to extend through the sawed off part of 
the stock and the leather fully an inch into the 
main part of the stock. You had better let the 
gunsmith fasten the forward end of the forearm 
to the barrel with a screw unless you have a 
drill, tap and screw of the right size. If you take 
off the Springfield rear sight be sure to first 
drive out the concealed pin that holds the base 
of the sight. The barrel inside the sight base is 
not browned and finishing that is a job for the 
gunsmith. If you like an open sight leave on 
the Springfield sight for it is the best of its 
kind. 
The old-time footpad, the highwayman of the 
17th century and early 18th, was as proud of 
his trade and as careful of his weapons as the 
most fastidious modern sportsman. Dick Turpin 
did but follow the fashion of his class in sport¬ 
ing magnificently mounted shooting-irons, for in 
Continental Europe as well as England, the pur¬ 
suit of Monsieur Moneybags was both exhil¬ 
arating and profitable. 
Proof of the above may be found in the three 
aspects of the two highwaymen’s “Toby” flint¬ 
lock pistols shown. The first group shows a 
superbly decorated French “Toby” from the Fon- 
tainbleau district. It is unlikely that the silver 
decoration will show in reproduction, beyond 
the finely worked butt plate but it extends 
throughout the whole length of stock, and half 
the length of the barrel. 
In the second and third groups the position 
of the two pistols is reversed, the Frenchman 
being* the lower. The English “Toby” with its 
grotesque silver mask on butt is a type well 
recognized and coveted by collectors. The sil¬ 
ver nameshield (second group) bears the mono¬ 
gram of the original sporting “hold-up” to whom 
it belonged and whose nefarious methods of liv¬ 
ing it assisted. The “mask” is held by a screw 
and is removable. Frequently it conceals a hol¬ 
low receptacle in the butt for the hiding of ill- 
gotten specie or jewels. 
Outdoor Recreation for Middle-Aged Men 
D R. SAMUEL G. DIXON, Pennsylvania 
State Commissioner of Health, declared 
in a recent talk on health that middle- 
aged men have kept themselves fit and helped 
business boom and cities grow by taking regular 
exercise. The Commissioner points out that this 
is the age of the middle-aged man, and that not 
only are they men who a generation ago were 
sitting about reading and playing golf, but they 
are mainstays of the movement for temperance. 
Dr. Dixon says: 
For all that has been said to the contrary, 
this is the middle-aged man’s day. You can talk 
of the early recognition of competence, of youth¬ 
ful success, and what does it all mean but that a 
man reaches middle age with more years of suc¬ 
cessful endeavor behind. 
A generation or so ago a business man who 
devoted himself assiduously to golf or tennis 
probably would have lost his credit at the banks 
and have been looked at askance by his business 
associates. Nowadays there are thousands of 
successful middle-aged business men who regu¬ 
larly devote a certain portion of their time to 
rational exercise. This is fortunate as condi¬ 
tions have changed, our cities have increased in 
size and environment of business is more re¬ 
stricted. Our grandfathers had much open air 
life thrust upon them; to-day, it must be sought. 
Cheeks bronzed by exercise in the open air 
stamp many a middle-aged man as a devotee of 
rational sports. College athletics probably are 
responsible for a share of this improvement, and 
public health teaching and a struggle for indi¬ 
vidual efficiency for the balance. 
The man who has succeeded young is more 
jealous, perhaps, of his physical powers than one 
who has plodded on to a middle-aged realization 
of his hopes. 
There is a movement for temperance on the 
part of unnumbered thousands of middle-aged 
men. Temperance in eating, in the use of alco¬ 
hol and a rational indulgence in exercises which 
will keep up the physical poise. There are hun¬ 
dreds of country clubs to-day where there was 
one twenty-five years ago, and it is the middle- 
aged men, and not the youngsters, who most per¬ 
sistently frequent them. It is well that this is a 
growing movement, for it will aid in offsetting 
the increasing mortality from degenerative 
growth. 
The pressure of life and the struggle for ex¬ 
istence is growing keener and it behooves the 
man who has reached the noonday of his life to 
give serious consideration to his physical well-being 
if he wishes to hold his place in the harness. 
