The winner of a school race, besides getting his prize, is entitled to wear a "School Shield"—a small gold shield, on which are engraved the Eton arms, and the name and year of the race won. To secure a "School Shield" is one of the greatest ambitions of every ambitious Etonian.
These two races being over, practice for the Eight which is to row at Henley begins. Every day the Captain of the Boats, aided by one or two masters, who have probably represented their Universities at Putney in their day, has out two crews, composed of the best of those who are in Upper Boats. These crews are gradually weeded out till, perhaps, only an eight and a four are left; and then, at last, the Eight is finally chosen.
It is difficult to say who should be pitied most while this process of choosing the crew is going on—the captain or those who are striving for their seats; the captain always worried and anxious that he should get the best crew to represent his school, the crew always in agony lest they should be turned out, and should never be able to wear the light blue. Of course, the captain has the advice of those much more experienced than
himself; but if there is a close point to settle, it is on him alone that the responsibility of the choice falls.
Once safely settled in the boat, there follows a period of five or six weeks of mixed pleasure and pain, for every crew, however good, must pass through periods of demoralization when for a few days they cease to improve, and periods of joy when they realize that, after all, they have some chance of turning out well.
For the last three weeks of this Henley practice the Eight is in strict training; but training for Eton boys is no great hardship. The days of "hard steak and a harder hen" are over. The Eton boy is always fit, and the chief point he has to observe is regularity.
His meals are much the same as usual—breakfast at eight, lunch at two, a light tea at five, supper together at eight in the evening, and bed at ten. There is no need to pull him out of bed in the morning, as at the Universities, for he has to go to school every morning at seven o'clock; he does not usually smoke—or, at any rate, is not supposed to by the rules of the school, and it is rarely that this rule is broken—and he does not indulge in
large unwholesome dinners, after the manner of many undergraduates.
Every evening at six o'clock he goes down to the river, and is probably tubbed in a gig-pair before rowing down the Datchet reach in the Eight. About twice a week the crew rows a full racing course, and is taken in for the last three minutes by a scratch crew, which goes by the name of "duffers," composed of five or six Old Etonians and masters, and one or two Eton boys, who are kept in training as spare men. The crew is coached from a horse by one of the masters—of late years Mr. de Havilland, who is certainly as keen for his crew to win as any boy in the school.
For the last five years the crew has taken a house at Henley for the days of the regatta, and gone to Henley by train the afternoon before the races. Though much wiser, this departure from Eton is not as impressive as in older days, when the crew used to drive to Henley for each day's racing; when, filled with pride and shyness, the young oarsman used to issue from his tutor's, wearing for the first time his light-blue coat and white cap, and walk to Mr. Donaldson's or Dr. Warre's house, where waited the brake which was