I was always fond of rowing, and as the weather was mild and pleasant next day, I concluded to go down to the harbor, hire a boat and take a row. I was told that I could get one at the foot of a little street running obliquely toward the piers from the junction of Broadway and Pratt streets, the latter being the street on which the Philadelphia trains run into the city—and I took a street-car and went down. When I asked the man for the boat, he looked at my crutch and said: “Can you row?” I told him that reminded me of a lady friend of mine, who shortly after my return from the “field of glory,” asked me if I didn’t find my corporeal defect very inconvenient about eating. “Why shouldn’t I row?” said I. “A man don’t hold the oars with his toes, any more than he holds his knife and fork in them when eating at the table—which would look rather odd, and render it necessary for him instead of sitting in the usual manner to take a somewhat novel position.” No further doubts were expressed as to my ability to row, and I got into a fifty-cents-an-hour boat, and rowed out into the harbor. “Be careful,” was the owner’s admonition as I pulled away, “that you don’t get caught in a squall and be driven away. The weather is uncertain in March.” “No danger,” I replied, and my boat glided out to where there was a stiff breeze blowing, and was soon dancing on the waves. I moved toward the southeast a mile or so, rested awhile near a ship that was lying at anchor, and had a chat with one of the mates. I was beginning to pull away from the ship, when I heard an excited voice toward my right sing out: “Look out there! Where the deuce are you going?” Immediately followed a confusion of voices, the ringing of bells, and the shriek of a steam whistle. I turned in the direction, and was somewhat alarmed to discover that I was about to cross the bow of a propeller, that came dashing along. Had I pulled the oars but once more, nothing would have saved me from being run down. My boat would have been shivered to pieces, I would have been stunned and my chances of being saved from a watery grave would have been as one against a hundred. With all the presence of mind I could command, I “backed oars,” and checked my boat, which of its own accord turned side-wise; and the propeller rushed by at such a trifling distance from me as to strike the blade of my right-hand oar. “Whew! my young man,” said the mate with whom I had been talking—for he still stood by the bulwark—“you came near going down.”