t, the more underdone the
better, and the smallest amount of drink upon which you could
manage to live. Two pints in the twenty-four hours was all that
most boat's crews that pretended to train at all were allowed,
and for the last fortnight it had been the nominal allowance of
the St. Ambrose crew. The discomfort of such a diet in the hot
summer months, when you were at the same time taking regular and
violent exercise, was something very serious. Outraged human
nature rebelled against it; and though they did not admit it in
public, there were very few men who did not rush to their water
bottles for relief, more or less often, according to the
development of their bumps of conscientiousness and obstinacy. To
keep to the diet at all strictly involved a very respectable
amount of physical endurance. Our successors have found out the
unwisdom of this, as of other old superstitions; and that in
order to get a man into training for a boat-race now-a-days, it
is not of the first importance to keep him in a constant state of
consuming thirst, and the restlessness of body and sharpness of
temper which thirst generally induces.

Tom appreciated the honor of being in the boat in his first year
so keenly, that he had almost managed to keep to his training
allowance, and consequently, now that the eventful day had
arrived, was in a most uncomfortable frame of body and
disagreeable frame of mind.

He fled away from Diogenes' flute, but found no rest. He tried
Drysdale. That hero was lying on his back on his sofa playing
with Jack, and only increased Tom's thirst and soured his temper
by the viciousness of his remarks on boating, and everything and
person connected therewith; above all, on Miller, who had just
come up, had steered them the day before, and pronounced the crew
generally, and Drysdale in particular, "not half trained."

Blake's oak was sported, as usual. Tom looked in at the Captain's
door, but found him hard at work reading, and so carried himself
off; and, after a vain hunt after others of the crew, and even
trying to sit down and read, first a novel, then a play of
Shakespeare, with no success whatever, wandered away out of the
college, and found himself in five minutes, by a natural and
irresistible attraction, on the university barge.

There were half a dozen men or so reading the papers, and a group
or two discussing the coming races. Amongst other things the
chances of St. Ambrose's making a bump the firs