Like a dutiful son, reverencing parental wisdom, returned to the house with the gun, and gave a statement of the facts. After being equally unsuccessful in the removal of the obstruction, the father looked carefully over the make of the gun, and said, in bad English: “Shon, oh, Shon! did you cshoot de gunne mid a zingle drigger ur mid de double drigger?” John replied that it was shot with a single trigger, which so enraged the father that he disremembered the commandments, and with irreligious prefixes declared any fool might know, to shoot a double-triggered gun “mid a zingle drigger, the ball would go only half way out.” The case was considered hopeless.
These short reports bear the only appearances of matter for levity that the writer has found in looking over volumes of manuscript proceedings of the biennial meetings.
At a subsequent meeting of the Medical Society, in 1819, an accident is given, as stated, “not for the surgery there was in it, a simple fracture of the left clavicle, but on account of the odd manner in which it occurred and the instructive sequel. The patient was but recently from New York City, an estimable young man, but not versed in the ways of the Western world,” ... “A squirrel he killed lodged in another tree on its way to the ground. The branch that held the unfortunate animal was an offshoot of an ancient sycamore which had in some past age of the world been broken off about thirty feet from the ground; but, like most sycamores, it was not willing to give up the ghost, and threw out incipient branches along the remaining section of the trunk; and at the top or point of fracture a crown of short limbs adorned the mammoth stump. It was one of these top branches that held the squirrel.
“After failing to dislodge the animal by the usual methods, he went up the tree, and on the top of the stump he found a good place to stand and bring the game in reach above his head. In the act, the decayed wood on which his feet were placed gave way and let the hunter down to the base, in a dark tube, six feet in diameter, without door or window, and no possibility of returning by the opening he entered.
“As soon as he recovered from the shock, and took in the situation, he began making voice signals of distress; but the caliber of the horn of his dilemma was too large and long to be blown effectually by an excited and injured asthmatic. He did, however, the best he could, thinking if those on earth could not answer his prayers, ample facilities had been obtained for being heard from above.
“Fortunately a fisherman had not proceeded far up the river before he heard groans of distress, that seemed to come from the water beneath his boat, and badly frightened, pulled ashore. Still the muffled cries of human distress were unceasing, and apparently in all directions among the trees—soon a man was located imprisoned in the interior of a sycamore. Friends were notified, axes procured and the hunter relieved, who gave many thanks, requesting that nothing be said about it.
“He soon recovered from the injury and to show there is no disposition in the human mind so universal as that which ‘locks the stable door after the horse is stolen,’ long after, his friends smiled but said nothing, as they looked upon a hatchet suspended to his hunting belt.” And circumstances make it highly probable that no one connected with those meeting with the accidents named, were in any way related to the enrolled men of renown, known in history as the “Squirrel Hunters of Ohio;” all are not Jews that dwell in Jerusalem.
Doctors were mostly hunters, consequently the hunter was not necessarily an ignorant man, still, in a population of many thousands, the exceptions might have appeared quite numerous. As a rule he became a man of extensive information, and hunted, not as a primitive Darwin-tailed quadruped “making a struggle for life with a club,” yet it was to supply the necessities of existence all the same. Subsistence was, however, easily obtained, and did not tax much of his time, and he had abundance of leisure to devote to experiment and observation. He was a worker in the vineyard, with the naturalist, geologist, botanist, biologist, archæologist, etc., and the aggregate co-operative labor accomplished became manifestly incalculably great. With object lessons daily before him, in due time he became familiar with the habits, instincts, intelligence and peculiarities of beasts, birds and insects, as well as acquainted with the geology, mineralogy and botany of the district in which he resided. Nothing escaped observation, from a spear of anemone to the spreading oaks of the forest. The names of all beasts, birds, plants and minerals with characters, habits and qualities could be given by the accurate and extensive observers and investigators who were found among resident squirrel hunters.
Hunter and Dog.