atory, the most
poisonous-looking whiskers I ever saw! They were too red to be natural.

I decided finally that he must have been scared by a Jersey bull so that
his whiskers turned red in a single night--and I was getting ready to
twit him about it; but he beat me to it. It seemed that all this time he
had been feeling more and more deeply offended at the way in which my
ears were adjusted to my head. He couldn't make up his mind, he said,
which way he would hate me more--with my ears or without them; but he
was willing to take a butcher knife and experiment. He also said that,
as an expert bookkeeper, he wouldn't know whether to enter my ears as
outstanding losses or amounts brought forward. Going into those woods we
were just the same as Damon and Pythias; but coming out his bite would
have been instant death, and I felt toward him exactly as the tarantula
does toward the centipede. We were the original Blue-Gum Twins.

Coming now to aquatic sports as distinguished from pastimes ashore, I
feel that I am better qualified to speak authoritatively, having had
more experience in that direction. Let us start with canoeing. Canoeing
is a sport fraught with constant surprises. A canoeing trip is rarely
the same thing twice in succession; and particularly is this true in
streams where the temperature of the water is subject to change. It is
comparatively easy to paddle a canoe if you only remember to scoop
toward you. You merely reverse the process by which truly refined people
imbibe soup. Even if you never master the art of paddling you may still
get along fairly well if you know how to swim. On the whole I would say
that one is liable to enjoy a longer career as a canoeist where one
swims but can't paddle, than where one paddles but can't swim.

Approaching the subject of motor-boating as compared with sailboating,
we find the situation becoming complicated and growing technical. In
sailing, as is generally known, you depend upon the wind; and there are
only two things the wind does--one is to blow and the other is not to
blow. But when you begin to figure up the things that a motor boat will
do when you don't want it to, and won't do when you do want it to, you
are face to face with one of the most complicated mathematical jobs
known to the realm of mechanical science.

A motor boat undoubtedly has a larger and fancier repertoire of cute
tricks and unexpected ways than anything in the nature of machinery. I
know this