When I was in the Divinity School we organised a boat club, a proceeding looked upon askance by sedate doctors of divinity and church-goers who thought the young men would do better to stick to their Hebrew, but T.W.  Higginson exclaimed that now he had some hope for the school.  It did take time.  It was a long walk from Divinity Hall to the river nor was the exercise brief, I have found rarely more rapturous pleasure than in the strenuous pulls I had on the Charles, and I witnessed the development of much sturdy manliness among those who, forsaking for a time their hermeneutics and homilies, gave themselves to the outdoor sport.  Our club included a number of law-students and a young instructor or two; among the latter Charles W. Eliot, then with his foot on the first round of the ladder which he has climbed so high.  Eliot pulled a capital stroke; my place was at the bow oar where a rather light weight was required who at the same time had head and strength enough to steer the boat among the perplexing currents.  Our excursions were sometimes long.  Once we went down the Back Bay, thence around Charlestown up the Mystic to Medford, during which trip I steered the Orion without a single rub, going and coming under I think some forty draw-bridges.  I have scarcely ever received a compliment in which I took more pride than when Eliot at the end, as we stood sweating and happy at the boathouse, told me that I had proved myself a good pilot.  One evening, I remember, the sun had gone down and the surface of Back Bay perfectly placid at full tide glowed with rich tints; the boats were shooting numerously over the surface, cutting it sharply, the cut presently closing behind in a faint cicatrice that extended far.  I thought of the beautiful simile in the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, just then appearing in the Atlantic.  Holmes had seen such things too, and said that they were like the wounds of the angels during the wars in heaven as described in Paradise Lost, gashes deep in the celestial bodies but closing instantly.  In those years Dr. Holmes was himself an enthusiastic oarsman and that night whom should we encounter alone in his little skiff but the Autocrat himself, out for his pleasure; he was plainly recognisable, though in most informal athletic dress, and as we sped past him a few rods away, Eliot from the stroke shouted a greeting over the water.  “Why, Charlie,” came ringing back the Autocrat’s voice, “I did not know you were old enough to be out in a boat!” Charlie was old enough, in fact our best oar, and took pleasure in demonstrating his maturity to the family friend who had seen him grow up.