ngaged in the
pleasant game of recrimination, which had to do with stolen golf
balls, the holding out of change and kindred sordid subjects. In my
weakened condition this display of fraternal depravity so offended my
instinctive sense of honor that I was forced to retire behind the
protecting pages of a 1913 issue of "The Farmer's Wife Indispensable
Companion," where I managed to lose myself for the time in a rather
complicated exposition of how to tell which chicken laid what egg if
any or something to that effect, an article that utterly demolished
the moral character of the average hen, leaving her hardly a leg to
roost on.

_May 8th._ "Give away," said the coxswain to-day, when we were
struggling to get our cutter off from the pier, and I gave away to
such an extent, in fact, that I suddenly found myself balanced
cleverly on the back of my neck in the bottom of the boat, so that I
experienced the rather odd sensation of feeling the hot sun on the
soles of my feet. This procedure, of course, did not go unnoticed.
Nothing I do goes unnoticed, save the good things. The coxswain made a
few comments which showed him to be a thoroughly ill-bred person, but
further than this I was not persecuted. After we had rowed
interminable distances through leagues upon leagues of doggedly
resisting water a man in the bow remarked casually that he had several
friends in Florida we might call upon if we kept it up a little
longer, but the coxswain comfortably ensconced upon the hackamatack,
was so deeply engrossed in the perusal of a vest pocket edition of the
"Merchant of Venice" that he failed to grasp the full meaning of the
remark. I lifted my rapidly glazing eyes with no little effort from
the keelson and discovered to my horror that we had hardly passed more
than half a mile of shore-line at the most. What we had been doing all
the time I was unable to figure out. I thought we had been rowing. I
could have sworn we had been rowing, but apparently we had not. I
looked up from my meditation in time to catch the ironical gaze of the
coxswain upon me, and I involuntarily braced myself to the assault.

[Illustration: "THE PROCEDURE, OF COURSE, DID NOT GO UNNOTICED"]

"Say, there, sailor," said he, with a slow, unpleasant drawl, "you're
not rowing; you're weaving. It's fancy work you're doing, blast yer
eyes!"

All who had sufficient strength left in them laughed jeeringly at this
wise observation, but I retained a dignified sil