s of hardtack and cake.The little house was called "Vagabond's Rest,"and a haven of rest and peace and content it certainly proved for many years to the Davis family.From here it was that my father started forth in the early mornings on his all-day fishing excursions,while my mother sat on the sunlit porch and wrote novels and mended the badly rent garments of her very active sons.After a seven-o'clock breakfast at the Curtis House our energies never ceased until night closed in on us and from sheer exhaustion we dropped unconscious into our patch-quilted cots.All day long we swam or rowed,or sailed,or played ball,or camped out,or ate enormous meals--anything so long as our activities were ceaseless and our breathing apparatus given no rest.

About a mile up the river there was an island--it's a very small,prettily wooded,sandy-beached little place,but it seemed big enough in those days.Robert Louis Stevenson made it famous by rechristening it Treasure Island,and writing the new name and his own on a bulkhead that had been built to shore up one of its fast disappearing sandy banks.But that is very modern history and to us it has always been "The Island."In our day,long before Stevenson had ever heard of the Manasquan,Richard and I had discovered this tight little piece of land,found great treasures there,and,hand in hand,had slept in a six-by-six tent while the lions and tigers growled at us from the surrounding forests.

As I recall these days of my boyhood I f-->>

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