Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/269

244 sea-sick voyage to Europe, or three months' dawdle at a fashionable watering-place.

Boats are for work; canoes are for pleasure. Boats are artificial; canoes are natural. In a boat you are always an oar's-length and a gunwale's-height away from Nature. In a canoe you can steal up to her bower and peep into her very bosom.

What memories are stored away in the canoeist's mind! My friend, Dr. Ramon Guiteras, and I have canoed together in many rivers, in the same little Racine boat (though we now believe that it is preferable to have only one man to a canoe), and we can enjoy rare hours of reminiscence, recalling delightful scenes and amusing incidents from this or that excursion. And let two canoeists, strangers, meet: their talk is an endlessly-pleasant comparison.

Going on this trip on the Connecticut, when we took our boat to the Boston and Maine depot, in Boston, we found another canoe in the baggage car. I happened to know one of the gentlemen who was tying it up, Mr. Morris Meredith, an experienced canoeman; and with him was a veteran of many rivers, Mr. Frank Hubbard, of Boston. What a chat of hours we had! What rapids we ran over again! What tender touches of memory when some river scene familiar to all was brought