I then went to a student in the class above my own, a natural and forcible speaker, and made an arrangement with him to hear me pronounce my oration, from time to time, and to criticize it in a common-sense way. This he did. At passages where he thought my manner wrong, he raised his finger, gave me an imitation of my manner, then gave the passage in the way he thought best, and allowed me to choose between his and mine. The result was that, at the public competition, I was successful. This experience taught me what I conceive to be the true theory of elocutionary training in our universities--vocal gymnastics, on one side; common-sense criticism, on the other. As to my physical education: with a constitution far from robust, there was need of special care. Fortunately, I took to boating. In an eight-oared boat, spinning down the harbor or up the river, with G. W. S---- at the stroke --as earnest and determined in the Undine then as in the New York office of the London ``Times'' now, every condition was satisfied for bodily exercise and mental recreation. I cannot refrain from mentioning that our club sent the first challenge to row that ever passed between Yale and Harvard, even though I am obliged to confess that we were soundly beaten; but neither that defeat at Lake Quinsigamond, nor the many absurdities which have grown out of such competitions since, have prevented my remaining an apostle of college boating from that day to this. If guarded by common-sense rules enforced with firmness by college faculties, it gives the maximum of healthful exercise, with a minimum of danger. The most detestable product of college life is the sickly cynic; and a thor- ough course in boating, under a good stroke oar, does as much as anything to make him impossible. At the close of my undergraduate life at Yale I went abroad for nearly three years, and fortunately had, for a time, one of the best of companions, my college mate, Gilman, later president of Johns Hopkins University, and now of the Carnegie Institution, who was then, as he has been ever since, a source of good inspirations to me,-- especially in the formation of my ideas regarding education. During the few weeks I then passed in England I saw much which broadened my views in various ways. History was made alive to me by rapid studies of persons and places while traveling, and especially was this the case during a short visit to Oxford, where I received some strong impressions, which will be referred to in another chapter. Dining at Christ Church with Osborne Gordon, an eminent tutor of that period, I was especially interested in his accounts of John Ruskin, who had been his pupil. Then, and afterward, while enjoying the hospitalities of various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, I saw the excellencies of their tutorial system, but also had my eyes opened to some of their deficiencies.