hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their
glasses and their gains.

CHAPTER X--THE RIVER

'Are you fond of the water?' is a question very frequently asked, in hot
summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. 'Very,' is the general
reply. 'An't you?'--'Hardly ever off it,' is the response, accompanied
by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt admiration of
that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of society in
general, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest that some of
the most painful reminiscences in the mind of every individual who has
occasionally disported himself on the Thames, must be connected with his
aquatic recreations. Who ever heard of a successful water-party?--or to
put the question in a still more intelligible form, who ever saw one? We
have been on water excursions out of number, but we solemnly declare that
we cannot call to mind one single occasion of the kind, which was not
marked by more miseries than any one would suppose could be reasonably
crowded into the space of some eight or nine hours. Something has always
gone wrong. Either the cork of the salad-dressing has come out, or the
most anxiously expected member of the party has not come out, or the most
disagreeable man in company would come out, or a child or two have fallen
into the water, or the gentleman who undertook to steer has endangered
everybody's life all the way, or the gentlemen who volunteered to row
have been 'out of practice,' and performed very alarming evolutions,
putting their oars down into the water and not being able to get them up
again, or taking terrific pulls without putting them in at all; in either
case, pitching over on the backs of their heads with startling violence,
and exhibiting the soles of their pumps to the 'sitters' in the boat, in
a very humiliating manner.

We grant that the banks of the Thames are very beautiful at Richmond and
Twickenham, and other distant havens, often sought though seldom reached;
but from the 'Red-us' back to Blackfriars-bridge, the scene is
wonderfully changed. The Penitentiary is a noble building, no doubt, and
the sportive youths who 'go in' at that particular part of the river, on
a summer's evening, may be all very well in perspective; but when you are
obliged to keep in shore coming home, and the young ladies will colour
up, and look perseveringly the other way, while the married dittos cough
slightly, a