IN CONCLUSION
eight; easily as active as any fellow on Eton play-ground—and that is a play-ground (American schools, with rare exceptions, have no real play-grounds)—who could out-walk any man in great, athletic Oxford, that nest of athletes; a slashing axe-man for over half a century—did he die young?
Mr. Morgan, of Oxford, in his University Oars, years ago, asked every one then living of the nearly three hundred men who had till then rowed in the Oxford-Cambridge 'Varsity race; and their friends, as to those who had died; and found that the average length of life of these racers exceeded that of ordinary men. Mr. Rudolph C. Lehmann, the famous English coach, whose disinterested and valuable services to university-rowing, both in his own land and in this country, have won him countless admirers, in his capital book on Rowing, commenting upon Mr. Morgan's report, says:
"And it must be remembered that this inquiry covered a period during which far less care, as a general rule, was exercised both as to the selection and the training of men than is the case at the present day. I may add my own experience. Since I began to row, in 1874, I have rowed and raced with or against hundreds of men in college races and at regattas, and I have watched closely the rowing of very many others in University and in Henley crews. I have kept in touch with rowing-men, both my contemporaries and my successors, and among them all I could not point to one (putting aside for the moment the three special cases I have just discussed) who has been injured by the exercise, or would state himself to have been injured. On the contrary, I can point to scores and scores of men who have been strengthened in limb and health—I say nothing here of any moral effect— by their early races, and the training
477
