ar water-sulky, a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat,
twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with
ten-foot sculls,--alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him
out, if he doesn't mind what he is about. In this I glide around the
Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up
the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats, which have
a swell after them delightful to rock upon; I linger under the
bridges,--those "caterpillar bridges," as my brother Professor so
happily called them; rub against the black sides of old wood-schooners;
cool down under the overhanging stern of some tall India-man; stretch
across to the Navy-Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the
Ohio,--just as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow; then strike
out into the harbor, where the water gets clear and the air smells of
the ocean,--till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up
of a sudden, I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the
dear old State-house,--plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at
home, but no chair drawn up at the table,--all the dear people waiting,
waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the
great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want
my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in company with
devils'-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached
crab-shells, I turn about and flap my long, narrow wings for home. When
the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get through
the bridges, but always make it a rule to beat,--though I have been
jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once between
a vessel swinging round and the pier, until our bones (the boat's, that
is) cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my
moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the rowing-dress, dash
under the green translucent wave, return to the garb of civilization,
walk through my Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and,
reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced period of life,
indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent chair.

When I have established a pair of well-pronounced feathering-calluses on
my thumbs, when I am in training so that I can do my fifteen miles at a
stretch without coming to grief in any way, when I can perform my mile
in eight minutes or a little less, then I feel as if I h