It was the same story over again when I had grown older and gone to college. There I determined to row. If ever you are in old England in May, go, if you can, to Oxford or Cambridge, if it is only to see the college races. The river-banks then are green, so green, and the hedges and trees are one waving nosegay. The big buttercups grow in yellow bunches by the brink. Where the meadows slope down to the stream crowds of gayly dressed people are standing, for the sisters and friends of every college lad have come up to see the sight. This is on one side of the river; on the other stretches the towing-path, and along it surge a mighty throng of "men" clad in all the colors of the rainbow, wild with excitement, shouting themselves hoarse. They are out to see their college crew row. And what a sight those crews are! Round the bend, here they come at last, the eight-oar crews, the men's bodies swinging like pendulums, the eight pair of hands dropping at the end of each stroke as one, and then shooting out altogether. With a sweep and a swish they dash by, and the rushes of college color struggle to keep up with them. Ah, the very memory of it makes me thrill still! When first I saw their ease and splendid strength, how simple it looked. Surely, any fairly strong man could make those broad-bladed oars come swishing through, leaving behind them, well below the surface, a clear track of white water. So it seemed to me, and I determined there and then, that first May morning, I too would row. But I tell you it costs something to sit in a good eight-oar. Long months of hard work, obedience to orders, and patient drudgery have to be undergone before the broad-bladed oar comes swishing through as I have tried to describe it. Your back aches, your wrists feel limp as wet strings, and your chest is absolutely bursting, and yet you do not seem to be able to put one good stroke in; the boat slips away from you all the time. So for weeks and months runs your daily experience. But when the rudiments of rowing are mastered at last, when patient attention and hard exercise have made you strong, and taught you when and where to use your strength, then comes the reward. And whatever delightful experiences life may have in store for you, few indeed of them can surpass the exhilaration, the sense of triumphant power, that none know, perhaps, so well as those who have rowed on a first-class eight-oar crew.