Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/21

Rh Selwyn well. He was a great organizer then and did much at Eton amongst the Masters and the boys at a time when a new order of things was introducing salutary reforms in the College. He set an example of a high ideal of personal Christian life, not exactly ascetic, but such as gladly endures hardship, and regards bodily training and moderate living as potent allies of success in good work. Amongst other matters he induced the authorities to institute examinations in swimming for all the School. Of course you remember how keen we were, having passed our examination, to erase our names from the list of the "Non Nant," hung up in every schoolroom, and proud of obtaining our freedom of the river. He got together an eight oar of Eton Masters which could hold its own with any crew on the river. He persuaded many of the masters to bathe every morning of the year, and I recollect how he loved to come early in the morning to my Father's house and fling up pebbles at his bedroom window to get him to come for his swim. Sometimes I was allowed to go, and I have a vivid recollection of squatting between the knees of the coxswain of the Eight, looking at Selwyn at Stroke, and my Father at seven, and the crew's special caps of black and red, shaped like sailors' nightcaps; the boat of the old style, well built and light, but only slightly outrigged at stroke and bow. At Athens all would bathe, and many a time Selwyn took me on his shoulders, swimming across the river and back whilst I held on to his hair.

As my Father left Eton in 1840 to go to Stratfield Mortimer, a College living, I never saw Selwyn again until he came on board the Egmont. His influence, this time, had persuaded my Father to come out to