During the latter years of the Bellars reign Mr. Hine owned a house on Cottage street, opposite the school house, which he allowed the former to occupy rent free as compensation for his weekly performance on the organ, and somehow the organist got it into his twisted noddle that the house had been given to him for work done, and it became necessary for the court to pass on the matter. Bellars employed Will Cumming as his attorney, and the latter showed considerable genius in handling the case, for he led his forlorn hope in such fashion that he almost prevailed against the facts, and as Mr. Hine’s lawyer was as lame as Will was active, the case actually looked serious at one time because of the ease with which the young man whipped the elder around the legal stump. Bellars was the music teacher of the neighborhood at a time when my benighted parents conceived the notion that I should learn to play the piano. Now, while Mr. Hine was very musical, my mother’s one standard of music was the speed at which it was performed, and one could play to her on a Sunday such a secular composition as “Yankee Doodle”, if only it were played slow and solemnly, and she would accept it as orthodox without hesitation, and I am my mother’s son when it comes to musical matters; hence I call my parents benighted for casting their money before Bellars. So far as can be judged, at this distance, Bellars’s chief notion of the teacher’s function was to receive the dollar, or whatever the lesson cost. Thus we can readily comprehend what the result must have been when such a teacher and such a pupil got together. The gentleman was a ventriloquist, or said he was, and he would cause little birds to sing up the chimney or under the piano, and sometimes a cat would meow or a dog bark in the far corner of the room. All this served to pass the hour devoted to the weekly lesson. The last time I saw Bellars was some years after his departure from Woodside, on an occasion when he was gawking down Broadway with a carpet bag that must have long lain dormant in some neglected corner, a picture that would have done a Puck artist a world of good, with his lean figure and excruciatingly thin visage. What was his latter end I know not, but I verily believe that he dried up and blew away. BOATING DAYS ON THE PASSAIC. During the eighties and early nineties the Passaic river, where it skirted Woodside, was one of the most celebrated rowing courses in the country, and here assembled well-known oarsmen from far and near, including such men as Courtney, Hanlon, Oomes, Ten Eyck, Edward Phillips and George Lee. So far as known, the Rev. Mr. Sherman, rector of Christ Church, Belleville, was the first to use a racing shell on the river. Closely following Mr. Sherman came Mr. James S. Taylor, whose earliest recollections are of the river and its ways. Mr. Taylor grew up on the water and was one of its first boatmen.