This was Nixon's opportunity, and he made the most of it.

He had been born on the eastern shore of Maryland and was brought up on canvasbacks, soft-shell crabs and terrapin--not to mention clams and sheepshead.

Nixon therefore launched out on the habits of the sacred bird--the crimes committed by the swivel-gun in the hands of the marketmen, the consequent scarcity of the game and the near approach of the time when the only rare specimens would be found in the glass cases of the museums, ending his talk with a graphic description of the great wooden platters of boiling-hot terrapin which were served to passengers crossing to Norfolk in the old days.

The servants would split off the hot shell--this was turned top side down, used as a dish and filled with butter, pepper and salt, into which toothsome bits of the reptile, torn out by the guests' forks, were dipped before being eaten.
The talk now caromed from birds, reptiles and fish to guns and tackles, and then to the sportsmen who used them, and then to the millionaires who owned the largest shares in the ducking clubs, and so on to the stock of the same, and finally to the one subject of the evening--the one uppermost in everybody's thoughts which so far had not been touched upon--the Mukton Lode.

There was no question about the proper mechanism of the traps--the directors were attending to that; the quality of the bait, too, seemed all that could be desired--that was Breen's part.