Thirdly.  I have found that some of those active exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later period.

A young friend has lately written an admirable article in one of the journals, entitled, “Saints and their Bodies.”  Approving of his general doctrines, and grateful for his records of personal experience, I cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirmation of his eulogy of one particular form of active exercise and amusement, namely, boating.  For the past nine years, I have rowed about, during a good part of the summer, on fresh or salt water.  My present fleet on the river Charles consists of three row-boats. 1.  A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2.  A fancy “dory” for two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with my young folks. 3.  My own particular water-sulky, a “skeleton” or “shell” race-boat, twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten-foot sculls,—­alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, if he doesn’t mind what he is about.  In this I glide around the Back Bay, down the stream, up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats which leave a swell after them delightful to rock upon; I linger under the bridges,—­those “caterpillar bridges,” as my brother professor so happily called them; rub against the black sides of old wood-schooners; cool down under the overhanging stern of some tall Indiaman; stretch across to the Navy-Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio,—­just as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow; then strike out into the harbor, where the water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean,—­till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the dear old State-house,—­plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, but no chair drawn up at the table,—­all the dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain.  As I don’t want my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in company with devil’s-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn about and flap my long narrow wings for home.  When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get through the bridges, but always make it a rule to beat,—­though I have been jammed up into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until our bones (the boat’s, that is) cracked as if we had been in the jaws of Behemoth.  Then back to my moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave, return to the garb of civilization, walk through my Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent chair.