One Sunday in winter the son of the maker of the park was out walking with his dad, when along came a man with a gun, dragging a big animal. It was a wolf, and the man took them to the spot where he had shot it. There was a big patch of blood upon the snow. This is the place where The Players now stands. Edwin Booth gave the house to the club, with the condition that he be allowed to make it his home as long as he lived. It is well known how the idea started on the yacht of Commodore Benedict and how that nucleus of clever folk grew into the institution we have to-day. It was not to be essentially an actors’ club, but a place where the actor could meet his equals. One must be an artist or a patron of the arts to belong and, of course, this includes writers, architects, sculptors, and painters. It is a very beautiful club. Stanford White is responsible for the architecture and gave his services gratis, as he did for The Lambs. Men coming from the Old World say that it is the only place in America that reminds them of home. The tonality of the rooms is like that of the very old houses of Europe; time has mellowed the walls as it does a bit of lace or tapestry. One of the ceilings that was a pale robin’s-egg blue in ’91 is now an exquisite velvet khaki. No man could paint it. Whistler would give up in despair the idea of even copying it. Like the quality of the hair and skin of a dear old face, it gives an air of good breeding, calm, and quiet over all. The halls and stairways of the house are lined with photographs and playbills, with, here and there, a painting. Over the fireplace hangs that admirable portrait of Edwin Booth by Sargent which gives one an entirely new conception of the actor. On one of the walls is a drawing by Tom Nast, whom I knew well and loved dearly. It is a political cartoon which was the original, I am told, of the “Tammany tiger.” Tom is the illustrator who disposed of the Irish-American question forever by drawing a banner flying over the Capitol at Washington, on which were the words, “Erin go unum pluribus bragh.” There are a number of unusually valuable mezzotints and wood engravings scattered about, and the biggest collection known to exist, twenty-six portraits in all, of the painter Naegle. Altogether there are five Sullys, an average Sir Joshua Reynolds, a remarkably good Gilbert Stuart, a beautiful Gainsborough in the earlier manner, while on one wall are two small panels by Benjamin West.