Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

And then “cox” threw both rudder lines over-board, and burst into tears.

How they got back George never knew, but it took them just forty minutes.  A dense crowd watched the entertainment from Kew Bridge with much interest, and everybody shouted out to them different directions.  Three times they managed to get the boat back through the arch, and three times they were carried under it again, and every time “cox” looked up and saw the bridge above him he broke out into renewed sobs.

George said he little thought that afternoon that he should ever come to really like boating.

Harris is more accustomed to sea rowing than to river work, and says that, as an exercise, he prefers it.  I don’t.  I remember taking a small boat out at Eastbourne last summer: I used to do a good deal of sea rowing years ago, and I thought I should be all right; but I found I had forgotten the art entirely.  When one scull was deep down underneath the water, the other would be flourishing wildly about in the air.  To get a grip of the water with both at the same time I had to stand up.  The parade was crowded with nobility and gentry, and I had to pull past them in this ridiculous fashion.  I landed half-way down the beach, and secured the services of an old boatman to take me back.

I like to watch an old boatman rowing, especially one who has been hired by the hour.  There is something so beautifully calm and restful about his method.  It is so free from that fretful haste, that vehement striving, that is every day becoming more and more the bane of nineteenth-century life.  He is not for ever straining himself to pass all the other boats.  If another boat overtakes him and passes him it does not annoy him; as a matter of fact, they all do overtake him and pass him—all those that are going his way.  This would trouble and irritate some people; the sublime equanimity of the hired boatman under the ordeal affords us a beautiful lesson against ambition and uppishness.

Plain practical rowing of the get-the-boat-along order is not a very difficult art to acquire, but it takes a good deal of practice before a man feels comfortable, when rowing past girls.  It is the “time” that worries a youngster.  “It’s jolly funny,” he says, as for the twentieth time within five minutes he disentangles his sculls from yours; “I can get on all right when I’m by myself!”