Roads of Adventure

n the Thames. His task it was to apply the finishing touches, to perfect the details which might add an inch of distance to a stroke, to find and remedy the flaws in this intricate human mechanism. His word was law and rightly so. Rowing the Cook stroke, Yale had defeated Harvard five years in succession. His dynasty, as one might call it, was to continue much longer, and when, at length, it came to an end, Yale had lost only one race to Harvard, her dearest foe, in more than a dozen years. To us youngsters the story of "Bob" Cook was like a romance. He had come to Yale from a Pennsylvania farm, rugged and seasoned at the plough and the pitchfork, and past twenty-one years of age. As a freshman in the spring of '72 he had wandered down to the river and the boat-house to gaze wistfully at the oarsmen. Unaccustomed to an indoor life, a winter of hard study had made him feel stale and restless. This rowing was a novelty that appealed to him. He could see no reason why he should not be given a trial. At this time Yale boating fortunes were at a low ebb. The six-oared crews had been trounced by such smaller colleges as Bowdoin and Williams and Amherst, and nobody had any clear ideas of form or style. The crew was an exclusive organization, however, with a flavor of social caste, and lowly freshmen with hayseed in their hair were distinctly ineligible. This "Bob" Cook was the best wrestler and rough-and-tumble fighter in college, but as for admitting him to the...