An American at Oxford

k of the athletic spirit lies in the colleges, though its highest development is found in university teams. To an American, this athletic

ty with which our sportsmen pursue the main chance. The difference here has a far deeper interest than the critic of boating or track athletics often realizes. Like the songs of a nation, its sports have a definite relation to its welfare: one is tempted to say, let me ru

depths of far niente. The true slacker avoids the worry and excitement of breakfast parties and three-day cricket matches, and conserves his energies by floating and smoking for hours at a time in his favorite craft on the Isis and the Cherwell-or "Char," as the university insists on calling it. He is a day-dreamer of day-dreamers; and despised as he is by the more strenuous Oxford men, who yet stand in fear of the fasci

the danger spot with a life-buoy and a rope; and in the summer, when the streams swarm with pleasure-craft, he wanders everywhere, pulling slackers out of the Isis and the Char. I

are the Canadian canoe and the punt. The canoe you will be familiar with, but your ideas of a punt are probably derived from a farm-built craft you have p

y upsets you without seeming to be aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the bank, consoled only by the fact that the Humane Society man was not at hand with his boat-hook to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your mentor will gravely

. To throw the bow to the right, ground the pole a foot or so wide of the boat, and then lean over and pull the boat up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn the wrist

PUNT AN

here, on the outer curve of the bend, the longest pole will not touch bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just beyond here, in the narrows, the water is so shallow that you can get the whole length of your body into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on the bank, you will soon

he name of the craft. One man calls his canoe "Vix Satis," which is the mark the university examining board uses to signify that a man's examination paper is a failure. Another has "P.T.O." on his bows-the "Please Turn Over" which an Englishman places at the bottom of a card where we say "Over." Still

make their roots strike deeper and wider into the soil, so that when the freshets come in the spring the banks will stand firm. The idea came some centuries ago from Holland, but has been so thoroughly Englished that the university, and, indeed, all England, would scarcely be

ll get a hint as to why the obsolete term still clings to this weir. Those fellows beyond who have tied up three deep to the bank are waiting to see us get ducked; but it is just as easy to shoot the lasher as to upset in it; and with that swarm of slackers watching, it makes a difference which you do. We have only to get up a fair pace

slacking to which the novice cannot aspire. Just beyond here we shall have to give the Thames Conservancy man threepence to roll the punt around a weir. If there were ladies with us, we should have to let them walk a quarter of a mile

ked eleven from the Marylebone Club; and every few minutes, if we waited, we might see the statuesque figures in white flannel suddenly dash after a ball or trot back and forth between the wickets. Few slackers have ha

he first gentleman he met to lend him half a crown to feed his starving family, should he get it? Should he? And what right have you to come to his house-his home!-and demand food at his board? You are a gentleman; but what is a gentleman? A gentleman is the dregs of the idleness of centuries! Then he will declaim about his plans for the renovation of the world. All this time his well-fed wife has been pouring out the tea and slicing the Genoa cake; and now, with a smile of reassurance, she takes our names and college

y can understand them; and if an eight ran into us, we should be fined a quid or two-one quid for a college eight, and two for the 'varsity. Below Iffley, indeed, there is as much clear punting as you could desire, and here you are in the full current of Thames pleasure-boats. The towing-path skirts the water, so that when you are tired of punting you can get out and tow your craft. The stretch of riv

LOCK

as the sites of religious houses; for not only was the land fertile, but the network of deep, if tiny, streams afforded defense from the heathen, while the main channel of the Thames afforded communication with the Christian world

ytham. If you don't watch very closely as you paddle up the sedgy backwater, you will miss it entirely, and that would be a pity, for its rude masonry, thatched roofs, and rustic garden fronts seem instinct with

heard a knot of strolling country men and women crooning a tune which was so strangely familiar that I immediately set it down as a village version of one of the noble melodies

eaned over the water, and I put up my hand to fend off. I chanced to be laughing to myself at the time at the thought of a fellow who, only the day before at the lasher, had tried to do the same thing. The lasher was forcing his punt against the willow on

ehouse up the stream, I hung my coat and trousers before the fire on a long baker's pole, and put my shoes inside the oven on a dough tray. My companion of the horse-laugh hung my shirt on a blossoming almond-tree, and then left f

Adam in the Chester mystery play was required by the stage directions to "stand nakyd and not be ashamyd." My barmaid advised me to take off my stockings and hang them up before the fire. The advic

ntury. He called the girl a huzzy, and, taking her by the shoulder, hustled her into the garden, and then passed her plum pudding out to her gingerly through a crack in the door. He covered me with ap

s, and the chimes in its belfry are playing the prelude to the hour of seven. It is a melody worth all the Char and the Isis, with all their weirs and their willows. Other medi?val chimes fill you with a delicious sorrow for the past; but when they cease, and the great bell tolls out the h