Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/108

90 had no great strength or skill as an oarsman, but he was most painstaking; and when he  was not himself actively pulling weights or  rowing, he was standing by, watching and  criticizing and trying to teach the others—even the most unpromising. But when Sheldon had had enough of the weights and the rowing-machines, he would pick out some one—usually Edward—and say, “You run the  rest of the squad to-day.”

Then he would go upstairs, where were the flying rings and horizontal bars and all the  rest of the gymnasium apparatus; and there  he would disport himself, wrestling with some  other big fellow on a mattress, or sailing up  and down the room on the rings, or shinning  up the rope to the ceiling, or “skinning the  cat” on the horizontal bar.

He was the hero in the gymnasium of all the little kids, and as he moved about performing his various stunts he was always attended by a group of small persons whose  bare arms and legs showed goose-flesh, but  who preferred to shiver and look on at such