water is worth a year’s schooling to any intelligent boy. A boat is a kingdom. We personally own one,—a mere flatbottomed “float,” with a centre-board. It has seen service,—it is eight years old,— has spent two winters under the ice, and been fished in by boys every day for as many summers. It grew at last so hopelessly leaky, that even the boys disdained it. It cost seven dollars originally, and we would not sell it to-day for seventeen. To own the poorest boat is better than hiring the best. It is a link to Nature; without a boat, one is so much the less a man.
Sailing is of course delicious; it is as good as flying to steer anything with wings of canvas, whether one stand by the wheel of a clipper-ship, or by the clumsy stern-oar of a “gundalow.” But rowing has also its charms; and the Indian noiselessness of the paddle, beneath the fringing branches of the Assabeth or Artichoke, puts one into Fairyland at once, and Hiawatha’s cheemaun becomes a possible possession. Rowing is peculiarly graceful and appropriate as a feminine exercise, and any able-bodied girl can learn to handle one light oar at the first lesson, and two at the second; this, at least, we demand of our own pupils.
Swimming has also a birdlike charm of motion. The novel element, the free action, the abated drapery, give a sense of personal contact with Nature which nothing else so fully bestows. No later triumph of existence is so fascinating, perhaps, as that in which the boy first wins his panting way across the deep gulf that severs one green bank from another, (ten yards, perhaps,) and feels himself thenceforward lord of the watery world. The Athenian phrase for a man who knew nothing was, that he could “neither read nor swim.” Yet there is a vast amount of this ignorance; the majority of sailors, it is said, cannot swim a stroke; and in a late lake disaster, many able-bodied men perished by drowning, in calm water, only half a mile from shore. At our watering-places it is rare to see a swimmer venture out more than a rod or two, though this proceeds partly from the fear of sharks,—as if sharks of the dangerous order were not far more afraid of the rocks than the swimmers of being eaten. But the fact of the timidity is unquestionable; and we were told by a certain clerical frequenter of a watering-place, himself a robust swimmer, that he had never met but two companions who would venture boldly out with him, both being ministers, and one a distinguished Ex-President of Brown University. We place this fact to the credit of the bodies of our saints.
But space forbids us thus to descant on the details of all active exercises. Riding may be left to the eulogies of Mr. N. P. Willis, and cricket to Mr. Lillywhite’s “Guide.” We will only say, in passing, that it is pleasant to see the rapid spread of clubs for the latter game, which a few years since was practised only by a few transplanted Englishmen and Scotchmen; and it is pleasant also to observe the twin growth of our indigenous American game of base-ball, whose briskness and unceasing activity are perhaps more congenial, after all, to our national character, than the comparative deliberation of cricket Football, bating its roughness, is the most glorious of all games to those whose animal life is sufficiently vigorous to enjoy it. Skating is just at present the fashion for ladies as well as gentlemen, and needs no apostle; the open weather of the current winter has been unusually favorable for its practice, and it is destined to become a permanent institution.
A word, in passing, on the literature of athletic exercises; it is too scanty to detain us long. Five hundred books, it is estimated, have been written on the digestive organs, but we shall not speak of half a dozen in connection with the muscular powers. The common Physiologies recommend exorcise in general terms, but seldom venture on details; unhappily, they are written, for the most part, by men who have already lost their
