154 " MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE ! " 



Smalls come on almost directly, which I can hardly hope to 

 get through as I have not done any mathematics whatever this 

 term. 



Tom Evans has been ill, so we have not had any boxing lately. 

 He is going to give a grand entertainment on the 2pth and has 

 engaged several celebrated men to perform. You see placards 

 about the town saying that " Professor Tom Evans begs to state," 

 etc. etc. 



There is yet more than a week before our boat-race and I have 

 been rowing since I began this letter. I fancy that I am sound 

 again. We may yet get fit by the day, but we needed to be very 

 fit, as we are a very light crew, bow only weighing about 8 st. 5 Ib. 

 At the same time, he is a very good man. No one in the boat 

 weighs n st., and in one of the adverse boats no one weighs less. 

 Still we are considered to have a chance second to none. I hope 

 it may be so. 



My belief that I was "sound again" at the time of 

 writing that letter proved to be incorrect, for though I 

 kept the affected part of my hand for hours in the hottest 

 endurable water the " gathering," which followed on a 

 blood blister, refused to disperse and two days before 

 the race I had to give it up as a bad job and clear out of 

 the boat. An eleventh-hour substitute was found in the 

 Earl of Elgin, who was not much of a rowing man anyway 

 and was quite untrained. Even so, Farrer stroked them 

 so well that they got into the final heat, and then were 

 defeated by no more than a yard by the winners. It 

 is reasonable to suppose, in the circumstances, that had 

 I kept all right, we must have won. Farrer is now the 

 vicar of Bisham, near Marlow, where his favourite re- 

 creation is rowing. He was, in 1873, the first " ninth man " 

 for the University Eight. He stroked our college boat 

 when head of the river in 1873. He was three times in 

 the winning crew of the University Fours, and once in 

 the pairs. He had been in the Eton Eight in 1868, and 

 he rowed in no fewer than fifty-seven races for Balliol, 

 so it is needless to say that in that early experience of 

 rowing I had the advantage of being behind a first-class 

 man. 



