The best preventive of this tendency to fevered mouths is a cup of 'water gruel,' or even a small slop-basin of it, the last thing before bedtime. It should not contain any milk; millet seed and oatmeal grits are best for its composition. The consumption of this light supper should be _compulsory_, whether it suits palates or not. The effect of it is very striking; it seems to soothe and promote digestion, and to allay thirst more than three times its amount of water would do. Some few men cannot, or profess to be unable to, stomach this gruel. The writer has had to deal with one or two such in his time. He had his doubts whether their stomach or their whims were to blame; but in such cases he gave way, and allowed a cup of chocolate instead--_without milk_. (Milk blends badly with meat and wine at the end of a hard day.) Chocolate is rather more fattening than gruel, otherwise it answers the same purpose, of checking any disposition to 'coppers.' It has been a time-honoured maxim with all trainers, that it is the fluids which lay on fat and which spoil the wind. Accordingly, reduction in the consumption of fluid has always been one of the first principles of training, and it is a sound one so long as it is not carried to excess. It is not at the outset of training that thirst so oppresses the patient, but at the end of the first week and afterwards, especially when temperature rises and days are sultry. Vinegar over greens at dinner tends to allay thirst; the use of pepper rather promotes it. In time the oarsman begins to accustom himself somewhat to his diminished allowance of fluid, and he learns to economise it during his meals, to wash down his solids. A coach should be reasonably firm in resisting unnecessary petitions for extra fluid, but he must exercise discretion, and need not be always obdurate. On this subject the writer reproduces his opinion as expressed in 'Oars and Sculls' in 1873:--