Page:Yachting wrinkles; a practical and historical handbook of valuable information for the racing and cruising yachtsman (IA yachtingwrinkles00keneiala).pdf/23

 rigging, which were of the best material. The age was not so luxurious as it is to-day. Though bronze and aluminum hulls, steel booms, wire rigging, silken sails, and the one hundred and one "fads," patented and otherwise, which are now considered indispensable for racing were unknown, the yachts cost a pretty round sum, but merely a trifle compared with the crack clippers of this year of grace.

The cabins of those yachts were not finished in costly hard woods carved by artists and highly polished. No upholstery of silken plush or hangings of rich tapestry were to be seen. Sperm oil in brass lamps of no particular design illuminated the space below. The fare, too, was plain and simple. Little or no wine of costly vintage was consumed. Honest claret, mellow Medford rum, and fine old whisky were the staple beverages with which those sturdy salts moistened their clay, while they solaced their souls with Virginia tobacco smoked in pipes of quaint Dutch shape. It is needless to say that the "400" of half a century ago didn't carry their valets with them while cruising on the Sound or while sailing to Cape May.

The old course of the club was from the club-house in the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, out to the Southwest Spit and back. The yachts, as a rule, were sailed by amateurs. No uniform was worn in those primitive days, and there was no red tape whatever. But it is questiona