+ 
"Vol. XI 
- or more. 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
AND REMINDER 
Manchester, Mass., Friday, August 15, 1913 
Myopia, the Original Country Club 
By GEORGE BABBITT (in Sunday Herald) 
HE, recent appearance of Frederick H. Prince, banker 
and broker of Boston, with his two sons, on the 
_ polo field down at Narragensett Pier, the three members 
of the family comprising three-fourths of one of the 
“teams in the brilliant matches, awakens pleasant recollect- 
ions of the earlier days of this and other popular out- 
door sports in and around Boston. Mr. Prince is in his 
fifties, I believe, but he still retains a remarkably good 
seat in the saddle on the polo and hunting fields, both 
here and abroad, and his career as a sportsman covers 
the history of both these sports, as followed in this vicin- 
ity. Both hunting and polo were introduced here under 
the auspices of the original Myopia club which was started 
in Winchester in 1879. Mr. Prince is credited with 
_ having first suggested hunting at Winchester, having pre- 
viously followed the hounds at Newport thirty years ago 
The Myopia, as is generally known, took its 
odd name from the circumstance'that most of its founders, 
including four members of the Prince family, were myopic, 
or near-sighted. Eyeglases were the club’s original badge. 
The original nucleus of the organization was baseball, 
but it soon enlarged its sphere of activity and in due time 
became the centre and inspiration of cross-country rid- 
ing, hunting and polo, as well as of coaching, gymkhana 
gaves, tennis and golf. In point of fact to the Myopia, 
as it was originally organized and constituted, belongs the 
distinction of being the original country club in this sect- 
ion of the country. The Country club of Brookline grew 
out of it, the vogue of Myopia’s sports and festivities hav- 
ing inspired a widespread desire for a similar organiza- 
tion nearer Boston. The Myopia was absorbed by the 
Country club in 1883, but later on it renewed its inde- 
pendent existence in Hamilton, where it still flourishes 
in comfortable and commodious quarters, surrounded by 
ample grounds for the club’s sports. Today country clubs 
modelled on the original Myopia pattern are numbered 
by scores. Few populous localities are without them. It 
was Myopia that pointed the way and set the pace under 
its pink and canary colors. 
A handsome volume, privately printed, by the late 
Marshall K. Abbott an old Myopian, records in merry 
vein the early history of Myopia. It includes colored 
lithographs of former masters of the hunt in full regalia 
and other representative sportsmen. This book reveals 
some of the early rites and ceremonies of that organiza- 
tion, including a description of the after-dinner proces- 
sions through the clubhouse, headed by a big tin bath- 
tub for a bass drum. ‘The musical instruments were of a 
somewhat primitive order, but they were sonorously ef- 
fective. A distinguished Englishman, who was gorgeous- 
ly entertained at dinner by the club, was accorded the 
honor of a Myopia landslide, which he was confidentially 
assured was the greatest compliment that could be paid 
to a visiting guest. This slide was produced by lifting 
one end of the dinner table aloft and causing all the viands, 
dishes and other dining table paraphernalia to slide in a 
POLO GROUNDS AT MYOPIA 
