To help young organizers we have produced a printed ritual, which any member who wants to start a Freckled Goldfish club in his own neighborhood can’t afford to be without. This booklet tells how to organize the club, how to conduct meetings, how to transact all club business, and, probably most important of all, how to initiate candidates.
The complete initiation is given word for word. Naturally, these booklets are more or less secret. So, if you send for one, please do not show it to anyone who isn’t a Freckled Goldfish. Three chief officers will be required to put on the initiation, which can be given in any member’s home, so, unless each officer is provided with a booklet, much memorizing will have to be done. The best plan is to have three booklets to a chapter. These may be secured (at cost) at six cents each (three two-cent stamps) or three for sixteen cents (eight two-cent stamps). Address all orders to Leo Edwards, Cambridge, Wisconsin.
CLUB NEWS
“We have eleven members in our Pool,” writes Gold Fin Samuel Ferguson of Philadelphia, Pa., “and at almost every meeting we have visitors. I am enclosing a cipher code that we use in writing secret messages.”
Also it is Sam’s suggestion that we have a booklet printed giving an official Freckled Goldfish secret code, then members can write to one another in secret. How many members of our club would like to possess such a booklet? Let me know as soon as possible. And if there is sufficient demand, we may produce one. But you fellows have got to show me that there is a demand for the booklet before we go ahead with it. Another boy suggested that we have such a booklet and then print part of “Our Chatter-Box” in code. How does that strike you?
“We now have a Freckled Goldfish song, yells, a jazz band composed of tin cans and our Pool is decorated swell,” writes Gold Fin Francis Smith of Chambersburg, Pa. “Also we have two goldfish, named Leo and Freckles.”
I suppose I ought to send my namesake a present. What do you want, Francis, a box of goldfish food or an angleworm?
Nancy Hannemann of Chicago, Ill., is, I think, our youngest member. Giving her [[xii]]age as two, she confesses that the letter of application was written by her brother, also a Freckled Goldfish.
“I have been a Freckled Goldfish for several months,” writes C. B. Andrews of Oklahoma City, Okla. “It is a secret and mysterious order, but nothing secret and mysterious has been done yet. So I suggest that you write to each member, telling him to join with other local members and do mysterious good turns. For example, suppose some poor old lady in your neighborhood has a birthday. Early in the morning before she is up and around, leave a couple of goldfish at her door with a card reading: ‘With the compliments of the Secret and Mysterious Order of the Freckled Goldfish.’ That would be pleasantly mysterious.”