Oars

Boats of another sort--needle-sharp bodies with eight yellow legs apiece--measured speed, three of the outlandish creatures appearing on a river in Connecticut, two on a lake in New Jersey.

At Princeton. Coach Logg* of Princeton has shuffled the varsity boat this spring, wags have said, "like a man who is trying to cheat himself at solitaire." But last Saturday he made no shifts; it was Coach Stevens of Harvard who had to rearrange his boat when Barton, No. 3, sprained three vertebrae in his neck in a boathouse accident. Harvard men were not so ready to bet on their crew after that, and indeed their caution seemed justified. The Princeton crew took the lead from the start and, moving beautifully over a lake like a wafer of aluminum, stood a length and a half ahead at the mile mark. The Harvard stroke got faster, the Harvard shell moved up, half a length behind, to even terms, and--at the finish--a quarter of a length ahead.

At Derby. Yale, Penn, Columbia --they would finish in that order, prophets said. The Yale crew of course has acquired, in the last three years, a legend of invincibility; people thought that Penn had a good crew, but not good enough; Columbia was not in it. In a wash of golden light that would have been sunset if daylight-saving had not turned it into midafternoon, the boats moved out; Penn was in front, Yale next, Columbia last. A mile went by. Was a Yale crew going to be beaten? The coxswain did not think so; he put his hand in his pocket, produced a red handkerchief and waved it, once; the Yale shell went up; Yale men leaned shrieking out of observation cars, danced wildly on the float as the boats crossed the line--Yale, Penn, Columbia. The prophets had been right.

* Appointed this season to succeed Dr. J. Duncan Spaeth.