ermined there and then, that first
May morning, I too would row. But I tell you it costs something to sit
in a good eight-oar. Long months of hard work, obedience to orders, and
patient drudgery have to be undergone before the broad-bladed oar comes
swishing through as I have tried to describe it. Your back aches, your
wrists feel limp as wet strings, and your chest is absolutely bursting,
and yet you do not seem to be able to put one good stroke in; the boat
slips away from you all the time. So for weeks and months runs your
daily experience. But when the rudiments of rowing are mastered at last,
when patient attention and hard exercise have made you strong, and
taught you when and where to use your strength, then comes the reward.
And whatever delightful experiences life may have in store for you, few
indeed of them can surpass the exhilaration, the sense of triumphant
power, that none know, perhaps, so well as those who have rowed on a
first-class eight-oar crew.

Do you see what I am driving at? I have been talking of our pleasures,
the things we want to do and choose to do. These, I say, cost us
trouble, and a great deal of care and painstaking. If any boy thinks he
can command success, even in his sports, without putting into them all
the will and all the brains, as well as all the brawn, he has as his
own, he must soon find himself left out in the cold. At best he can only
be a second-rate. Now this law of life, namely, that you must work hard
to succeed in anything, does not apply to us, who are lords of creation,
alone. One of the most wonderful things about our world is that the
rules of the game of life are obeyed by the smallest atom that lives as
well as by "king man" himself. If any living thing neglects or disobeys
those rules, that disobedient being, whether it be common or low,
suffers for its disobedience. If it obeys those rules, it grows stronger
by obedience, and increases and develops its own power.

Let me tell you one or two instances of obedience by the creatures round
us to these hard rules of life.

Have you ever seen a little salmon? A dainty, plucky little fellow he
is. It takes him two years to grow from the egg to your finger's length.
These two years of babyhood are spent in the quiet waters of his river
home. By the time the second summer is passed he is about five inches
long, golden-sided, with bright crimson spots, and weighs perhaps two
ounces. Then he starts on his first great jou