up into the bathroom and look out of the window. It is wonderful.

Yet meanwhile I have lost some of my illusions about this race. I have
a boat myself; I myself have rowed all over the course in my boat. It
is only ten feet long, but it is very, very heavy. Still, I have rowed
in it all over the course--with ease. Yet people talk as if it was
a marvellous thing for eight men to row a light boat over the same
water. Why is that? It is because the ignorant land-lubber regards
the river Thames as a pond; or else he regards it as a river flowing
always to the sea. He forgets about the tide. The Boat-Race is rowed
_with the tide_; they deliberately choose a moment when the tide is
coming in, and hope nobody will notice; and nobody does notice. The
tide runs about three miles an hour, sometimes more; if they just sat
still in the boat they would reach Mortlake eventually, and the crowd
would get a good look at them, instead of seeing them for ten seconds.
The race ought to be rowed _against_ the tide. Then it really would
be a feat of strength; then it really would take ten years off their
lives--perhaps more. Then perhaps small boys would drop things on them
from the bridges, as they do on me. I wonder they don't try to do
that now. There is a certain quiet satisfaction in dropping things
on people, especially if they are labouring under Hammersmith Bridge
against the tide, and I should imagine that the temptation to drop
things on a University crew would be almost irresistible. It is not
everyone who can look back and say, "In 1890 I hit the Oxford stroke
in the stomach with a stone." As it is, though, I suppose they go too
fast for that kind of thing.

But apart from the small boys on the bridges, the present system is
most unsatisfactory for people who know "a man in the boat." Even in a
football match it is possible for an aunt occasionally to distinguish