134 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
while the oarswomen, in turn, were likened to 
Minerva with her feet upon a tortoise. Many 
were the disasters in the earlier days of femi- 
nine training:—first of toilet,— straw hats 
blowing away, hair coming down, hairpins 
strewing the floor of the boat, gloves commonly 
happening to be off at the precise moment of 
starting, and trials of speed impaired by some- 
body’s oar catching in somebody’s pocket. 
Then the actual difficulties of handling the long 
and heavy oars, — the first essays at feathering, 
with a complicated splash of air and water, as 
when a wild duck, in rising, swims and flies 
together and uses neither element handsomely, 
—the occasional pulling of a particularly vigor- 
ous stroke through the atmosphere alone, and 
at other times the compensating disappearance 
of nearly the whole oar beneath the liquid sur- 
face, as if some Uncle Kiihleborn had grasped 
it, while our Undine by main strength tugged 
it from the beguiling wave. But with what 
triumphant abundance of merriment were these 
preliminary disasters repaid, and how soon were 
they outgrown! What time we sometimes 
made, when nobody happened to be near with 
a watch, and how successfully we tossed oars 
in saluting, when the world looked on from a 
picnic! We had our applauses, too. To be 
sure, owing to the age and dimensions of the 
