Note C — XIII. MY COMPANIONS.

We copy from a private letter the following account of the origin of this club and of its grotesque name, which has lost, alas! its significance to the younger generation. "In the year 1844 (I think it was) a few of us young ministers formed a club, including Charles Brigham, Edward Hale, John Weiss, with one or two elders, as Dr. Hedge and, later, O. B. Frothingham, Starr King, W. R. Alger, William B. Greene, and others. We went long without a name, in spite of my urgent appeals as Secretary, till one fine day, at George R. Russell's house in West Roxbury, in an after-dinner frolic, Weiss turned the garden-engine hose upon a fellow-member and drenched him from head to foot; upon which escapade it was unanimously agreed to call ourselves the 'Hook-and-Ladder,' by which name the memory of it is fondly kept among us to this day. A similar older fraternity had gone by the name of the 'Railroad Association,' and, in imitation, when it was proposed to borrow a title from some like line of industry we, on this sudden whim, chose the fire-department."