"I don't know about that," objected the Tory oarsman. "I hope you will do your best to cheer him up, though; and, especially, if you find out that any girl has got him on a string, talk him out of it and clear his mind." "Oh, thou untamed Hercules," replied Holworthy, laughing at this last simple request. "I suppose you think you could snap such a string as you can an oar. When Omphale ties you up in her yarn, you won't find it so easy to break." "Well, I hope old Rivers is not snarled up in any such tackle," said Bender, as he rose to go. "After all, though, I believe I would rather have him in the middle of the boat than any other man in the University,--even if he were in love with twenty girls." And with this acknowledgment in spite of such Mohammedan possibilities, Billy Bender went off to the river. As Bender had said, Charles Rivers had been "playing in hard luck." Though a splendid oarsman he had never won a race. In his Freshman year he had been taken out of his class crew to be a substitute for the University eight. The next year he rowed No. 4 on the 'Varsity; but Yale won. He filled the same place all through his Junior year, until a week before the race, when he sprained his heel and had to sit in the referee's launch and watch his comrades get their revenge on the Blue. This year was his last, and he had begun training, even with the new men, before Christmas. Few people realize through what a man must go who tries for a university crew. Even those who have been to the rowing colleges cannot fully appreciate it unless they have themselves trained with the big crew, or been closely associated with some man who has done so. True, it is only to lead a very regular abstemious life, and to do a good deal of healthful, though hard work. It may seem easy to do this for seven months--perhaps it is so for those superior to the little vices that make life pleasant for us weaker ones. But you, my friend, who like a good dinner and a cigar, and the merry company of your fellow-men, you try it,--particularly if you are living in the midst of men who are enjoying their youth to its utmost. Leave them before ten o'clock and go to bed just as Tom is preparing to make a Welsh rarebit, and Dick is brewing a punch, and Harry has got out his banjo. Gaze day after day on your favorite pipes that look beseechingly at you from the mantel-piece. Run five miles every day, and row ten or fifteen while the coach and coxswain take turns at telling you how utterly useless you are; then try to study all the evening for an examination. Watch your friends starting off without you on moonlight sleigh rides, and theatre sprees, and yachting and coaching parties. Go to a dinner and refuse everything indigestibly tempting that is put under your nose, look on the wine when it is red and don't drink it, and smell the other men's cigars. For six or seven months out of the nine of a college year he must do all this