up. I dressed, and felt very small, looking with envy on the real
swimmers, and especially at the fat usher, who was rolling about like a
porpoise in the middle of the river.

The boat came, and I was allowed only to see her from the bank. How
lovely she looked with her outside varnish and her internal coat of
Cambridge blue! How beautiful were the light and elegant oars that I was
forbidden to touch!

Some time after that one of my school-fellows said: "You know, Hamerton,
you're just as well out of that boat as in her, for whenever we want to
go out on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons we always find that the
privates have got the start of us. The fact is, the boat is as if she
belonged to them." In a word, the private pupils looked on the
aspirations of the others with marked disapproval. There ought, of
course, to have been a plurality of boats; but Mr. Cape was not himself
a boating man, and did not encourage the amusement. He dreaded the
responsibility for accidents.

One result of my adventure was a firm resolution that I would learn to
swim, and not only that, but become really a good swimmer. I never
attempted anything that seemed so hopelessly difficult for me, or in
which my progress was so slow; but in course of time I did swim, and
many years afterwards, from daily practice in the longer and warmer
summers of France, I became an expert, able to read a book aloud in deep
water whilst holding it up with both hands, or to swim with all my
clothes on and a pair of heavy boots, using one hand only and carrying a
paddle in the other, whilst I drew a small boat after me. The
perseverance that led to this ultimate result is entirely due to that
early misadventure at Doncaster. I have learned one or two other things