if your blood wants rousing, turn round that stake in the river,
which you see a mile from here; and when you come in in sixteen

minutes, (if you do, for we are old boys, and not champion
scullers, you remember,) then say if you begin to feel a little

warmed up or not! You can row easily and gently all day, and you
can row yourself blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just

as you like. It has been long agreed that there is no way in which
a man can accomplish so much labor with his muscles as in rowing.

It is in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension of
his volitional and muscularexistence; and yet he may tax both of

them so slightly, in that most delicious of exercises, that he
shall mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or recall the remarks

he has made in company and put them in form for the public, as well
as in his easy-chair.

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that
intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay

are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping
it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after

me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam
still shining for many a long rood behind me. To lie still over

the Flats, where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling
and the sculpins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat, - to

rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up some tranquil
creek, - to take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the

thousand-footed bridges, and look down its interminable colonnades,
crusted with green and oozy growths, studded with minute barnacles,

and belted with rings of dark muscles, while overheadstreams and
thunders that other river whose every wave is a human soul flowing

to eternity as the river below flows to the ocean, - lying there
moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns of Tadmor

in the Desert could not seem more remote from life, - the cool
breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against the half-

sunken pillars, - why should I tell of these things, that I should
live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened with

boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots we
must be not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and

wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with
skaters!

I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed,
soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our

Atlantic cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon
lineage. Of the females that are the mates of these males I do not

here speak. I preached my sermon from the lay-pulpit on this
matter a good while ago. Of course, if you heard it, you know my

belief is that the total climatic influences here are getting up a
number of new patterns of humanity, some of which are not an

improvement on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows,
long in the spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the ship,

which is the great organ of our national life of relation, is but a
reproduction of the typical form which the elements impress upon

its builder. All this we cannot help; but we can make the best of
these influences, such as they are. We have a few good boatmen, -

no good horsemen that I hear of, - I cannot speak for cricketing, -
but as for any great athletic feat performed by a gentleman in

these latitudes, society would drop a man who should run round the
Common in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, single-stick

players, and boxers, we have no reason to be ashamed of. Boxing is
rough play, but not too rough for a hearty young fellow. Anything

is better than this white-blooded degeneration to which we all
tend.

I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition only last evening.
It did my heart good to see that there were a few young and

youngish youths left who could take care of their own heads in case
of emergency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolving

himself into the primitive constituents of his humanity. Here is a
delicate young man now, with an intellectualcountenance, a slight

figure, a sub-pallid complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a
mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jonathan from between

the ploughtails would of course expect to handle with perfect ease.
Oh, he is taking off his gold-bowed spectacles! Ah, he is

divesting himself of his cravat! Why, he is stripping off his
coat! Well, here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and

with two things that look like batter puddings in the place of his
fists. Now see that other fellow with another pair of batter

puddings, - the big one with the broad shoulders; he will certainly
knock the little man's head off, if he strikes him. Feinting,

dodging, stopping, hitting, countering, - little man's head not off
yet. You might as well try to jump upon your own shadow as to hit

the little man's intellectual features. He needn't have taken off
the gold-bowed spectacles at all. Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble,

cool, he catches all the fierce lunges or gets out of their reach,
till his turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the batter

puddings against the big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into
the big one's face, and, staggering, shuffling, slipping, tripping,

collapsing, sprawling, down goes the big one in a miscellaneous
bundle. - If my young friend, whose excellent article I have

referred to, could only introduce the manly art of self-defence
among the clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better sermons

and an infinitely less quarrelsome church-militant. A bout with
the gloves would let off the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion,

which, united, have embroiled their subject in a bitter
controversy. We should then often hear that a point of difference

between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being vehemently
discussed in a series of newspaper articles, had been settled by a

friendly contest in several rounds, at the close of which the
parties shook hands and appeared cordially reconciled,

But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid. I was for a
moment tempted, by the contagion of muscularelectricity last

evening, to try the gloves with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a
friend to the noble art; but remembering that he had twice my

weight and half my age, besides the advantage of his training, I
sat still and said nothing.

There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of with reference
to old age. I refer to the use of dioptric media which correct the

diminished refracting power of the humors of the eye, - in other
words, spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, fair

type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard of focal
distance, and my eyes are as good as ever. But if YOUR eyes fail,

I can tell you something encouraging. There is now living in New
York State an old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail,

immediately took to exercising it on the finest print, and in this
way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit of taking

liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. And now this old
gentleman performs the most extraordinary feats with his pen,

showing that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I should be
afraid to say to you how much he writes in the compass of a half-

dime, - whether the Psalms or the Gospels, or the Psalms AND the
Gospels, I won't be positive.

But now let rue tell you this. If the time comes when you must lay
down the fiddle and the bow, because your fingers are too stiff,

and drop the ten-foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and,
after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come at last to the

undisguised reality of spectacles, - if the time comes when that
fire of life we spoke of has burned so low that where its flames

reverberated there is only the sombre stain of regret, and where
its coals glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers of

memory, - don't let your heart grow cold, and you may carry
cheerfulness and love with you into the teens of your second

century, if you can last so long. As our friend, the Poet, once
said, in some of those old-fashioned heroics of his which he keeps