Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/99

Rh ing it like a bow in the other! I’ll have to show you.”

"Of course I can’t row in proper form with all my clothes on,” said Edward. "I’ll bet I  could soon learn. I don’t believe it’s in it with baseball, so far as skill goes.”

"Ho, is n’t it! You have to be born to do it—or else you can never really learn.”

“Are you a born oarsman?”

“Well, more or less.” Charles disliked having to make this personal application of the principle. “I’ll tell you, Ned, the real reason why I wanted this thing. It looks as if they’d put me in to stroke the crew this year; there’s  nobody else who’s right for the place in weight  and so on. It’s important that a stroke should have a wonderful sense of time—so that he  should know instinctively when he’s rowing  thirty-two strokes to the minute and when he’s  rowing thirty-four, and so that he should be  able to keep the pace even and not be hitting  it up and then dropping it again. Now I don’t know how good I may be at that; and I  thought if I could sit here and row every day,