e they die.

"But, after all, the river is the feature of Oxford, to my mind;
a glorious stream, not five minutes' walk from the colleges,
broad enough in most places for three boats to row abreast. I
expect I will take to boating furiously: I have been down the
river three or four times already with some other freshmen, and
it is glorious exercise; that I can see, though we bungle and cut
crabs desperately at present.

"Here's a long yarn I'm spinning for you; and I dare say after
all you'll say it tells you nothing, and you'd rather have twenty
lines about the men, and what they're thinking about and the
meaning, and the inner life of the place, and all that. Patience,
patience! I don't know anything about it myself yet, and have had
only time to look at the shell, which is a very handsome and
stately affair; you shall have the kernel, if I ever get at it,
in due time.

"And now write me a long letter directly, and tell me about the
Doctor, and who are in the Sixth, and how the house goes on, and
what sort of an eleven there'll be, and what you are doing and
thinking about. Come up here try for a scholarship; I'll take you
in and show you the lions. Remember me to old friends.--Ever your
affectionately,

T. B."

CHAPTER II

A ROW ON THE RIVER

Within a day or two of the penning of this celebrated epistle,
which created quite a sensation in the sixth-form room as it went
the round after tea, Tom realized one of the objects of his young
Oxford ambition, and succeeded in embarking on the river in a
skiff by himself, with such results as are now described. He had
already been down several times in pair-oar and four-oar boats,
with an old oar to pull stroke, and another to steer and coach
the young idea, but he was not satisfied with these essays. He
could not believe that he was such a bad oar as the old hands'
made him out to be, and thought that it must be the fault of the
other freshmen who were learning with him that the boat made so
little way and rolled so much. He had been such a proficient in
all the Rugby games, that he couldn't realize the fact of his
unreadiness in a boat. Pulling looked a simple thing enough--much
easier than tennis; and he had made a capital start at the latter
game, and been highly complimented by the marker after his first
hour in the little court. He forgot that cricket and fives are
capital training for tennis, but that rowing is a speciality, of
the rudiments of which he