Many were the disasters in the earlier days of feminine
training;--first of toilet, straw hats blowing away, hair coming down,
hair-pins strewing the floor of the boat, gloves commonly happening to
be off at the precise moment of starting, and trials of speed impaired
by somebody's oar catching in somebody's dress-pocket. Then the actual
difficulties of handling the long and heavy oars,--the first essays
at feathering, with a complicated splash of air and water, as when a
wild-duck in rising swims and flies together, and uses neither element
handsomely,--the occasional pulling of a particularly vigorous stroke
through the atmosphere alone, and at other times the compensating
disappearance of nearly the whole oar beneath the liquid surface, as if
some Uncle Kuehleborn had grasped it, while our Undine by main strength
tugged it from the beguiling wave. But with what triumphant abundance
of merriment were these preliminary disasters repaid, and how soon
outgrown! What "time" we sometimes made, when nobody happened to be near
with a watch, and how successfully we tossed oars in saluting, when the
world looked on from a pic-nic! We had our applauses, too. To be sure,
owing to the age and dimensions of the original barge, we could not
command such a burst of enthusiasm as when the young men shot by us in
their race-boat;--but then, as one of the girls justly remarked, we
remained longer in sight.
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