The day was beautiful and the water perfect, a most unusual combination for the 'Varsity race day. All the steam yachts had gone up the river, and most of the others towed up also and anchored along the course near the finish. It would be waste of time to try to describe the picture of the great annual event of oardom, a picture that is done every year in the sumptuous paints of the press, with the sky and the river and the yachts and the crowds, and above all the two colors everywhere. It is painted every year, but no one can appreciate it who has not seen the original. It is not for this spectacle, however, that all these tremendous crowds gather; it is to see two long thin yellow streaks, each surmounted by nine bodies, eight of which swing back and forth in a most monotonous, uninteresting manner. That is all that the race looks like to most of the spectators--then why do they go to see it? Because they know that those sixteen men are going through about the hardest physical strain that men can bear. To the layman there is in tennis and base-ball four times the skill and pretty playing that there is in foot-ball, and in rowing there is none at all. Yet a tennis match excites the least interest of all college sports, base-ball comes next in the rising scale, and both of these combined do not rouse a quarter of the enthusiasm provoked by a foot-ball game. But at the head and front of all athletic contests is rowing--because it hurts the most. Foot-ball, it is true, requires a dashing courage and disregard of breaks and bruises (though "dashing courage" and all that sort of thing never occurs to the struggling youngsters), but there is always the great relief of frequent short rests during the game; in a four-mile boat-race there is no let-up. The half-back makes his rush and plunge, is slammed on the hard ground and buried under hard muscle, is picked up, rubbed a little, and with the cheers of the crowd in his ears again goes at the line, head first, as hard as ever. But for the oarsman there is only the incessant pull, pull, pull, with the bees in his brain and the growing hole in his stomach, the aching legs and leaden arms, and before him, growing dimmer and dimmer, the bare back that will never stop rising and falling, and that he must follow, it seems, to death. Oh! it does hurt, and that is why the great crowd goes to see it and goes wild. Yes, fair and gentle one, that is just why even you go to the Thames as your predecessor went to the Colosseum. There is this vast difference, however, between you and Octavia--the Roman Vestal looked at hired gladiators, and prisoners who were forced to hurt each other, whereas you go to see Tom, and Jack, and dear Mary's brother Mr. Brown, hurt themselves; and, God bless you, I hope you always will. So long as you do, this republic will never fail from the effeminacy of its young men. The "gang" had got seats in the same car on the observation-train and were waiting for it to start.