try to do
that now. There is a certain quiet satisfaction in dropping things
on people, especially if they are labouring under Hammersmith Bridge
against the tide, and I should imagine that the temptation to drop
things on a University crew would be almost irresistible. It is not
everyone who can look back and say, "In 1890 I hit the Oxford stroke
in the stomach with a stone." As it is, though, I suppose they go too
fast for that kind of thing.

But apart from the small boys on the bridges, the present system is
most unsatisfactory for people who know "a man in the boat." Even in a
football match it is possible for an aunt occasionally to distinguish
her nephew and say, "Look, there is Edward." But if she says, "Look,
there is Edward," meaning No. 5 in the Cambridge boat, you know she is
imagining. All she sees is a vague splashing between two bowler-hats,
or possibly the Oxford rudder moving at high speed through a horse's
legs. If the race were rowed against the tide we should all get our
money's worth; and the oars-men could then put more realism into their
"After-the-Finish" attitudes. As it is, they roll about in the boat
with a praiseworthy suggestion of fatigue, but nobody really believes
they are tired--nobody at least who has rowed on the Thames with the
tide.

No, I am afraid the actual race is a sad hypocrisy. But the training
must be terrible. Think of it. They started practising in the second
week in January: they row the race in the fourth week in March. For
ten weeks and more they have been "getting those hands away" and
driving with those legs and not washing-out. For ten weeks horrible
men with huge calves have shouted at them and cursed them and told
them their sins, like a monk telling his beads--"Bow, you're late;
Two, you're early; Three, you're bucketing; Four, you're not bucketing
enough." I listen painfully, hoping against hope that at least one of
the crew may be left out of the catalogue, that Stroke at least may be
rowing properly. But no, Stroke is not forgotten, and even Cox doesn't
always give complete satisfaction.

Sometimes I feel that I ought to row out in my little boat and offer
to tow the incompetents back to Putney. Yet they seem somehow to
travel very easily and well. But, however harmoniously they swing past
"The Doves" or quicken to thirty-five at Chiswick Eyot, I know that in
their hearts they are hating each other. Goodness, how they must hate
each other! For ten weeks the