SHOWING THEM THE WAY.

Evening Star, Issue 4202, 15 August 1876, Page 4

SHOWING THEM THE WAY.

He was a short man, with a bouquet in his button-hole ; and looking oft' on the lake where a dozen or so boats were skimming the waters under the skilled strokes of the oarsmen, he said to himself, " I'll go off and show these fellows how it is done. I have never been in a boat to be sure, but it's just as e-a-s-y. They say it takes practice. Nonsense ! takes your granny ! It takes common sense; any man, not an idiot,, can row." After relieving his mind in this manner, he went down to the boat-hou:e, paid 25 cents. and settling his hat over his larboard ear, stepped into the boat, and commenced to ship the oars—thinking all the time how he would make the boat travel like a thing of life Over the water. Then he squared himself for the first stroke.' lie imagined himself at the stroke oar of the Cornell boat; and it would come into his mind that,

if he had been there, they would ha\e] iaid out Harvard for at least another length. He caught himself looking around to see if-the Danbury News l Mafa was on the shore lying in waW?ojr him, with a tape, to find the length" of his arm r size of his muscle, &c. He calculated to row about forty ! strokes to the minute, to be in--1 creased to seventy-five on a spurt, if required. It was a beautiful [--picture. The placid waters of the 1 lake, reflecting the blue sky and fleecy clouds above, the fleet keels cutting the water in every direction, made the feiene inspiring to the last degree, and as his poetic eye took in the surroundj ing objects his heart fairlyHfchrilled with (triumphant expectation. Then he reached well forward and made a dps-! perate grab at the water, caught it the whole length of one oar, while the other described an arc through the immensity of space; then two very stumpy legs stood straight up in the air, and the rest of that man went into the •bottom of the boat, and got tangled up with the warp and rusty bailer. Then he swore, and thumped himself with the ends of the oars, and barked the skin off generally, and finally got up aid puddled to the shore, with the crown cut of his hat, and reef band jerked out of his pants, his bouquet ' ripped up by the roots, and his moral character stranded to a ropeyarn. Then he got out and walked off, with the remark that some people might see fun . in such cussed tomfoolery, but he couldn't. His arm was not measured. —' Danbury News.'