GRADUATES AND BOATING.

RECENT letters from graduates indicate that the interest in our boating matters, manifested by them at the time of our withdrawal from the Association, has in no wise declined, and is seeking to so express itself as to best improve our chances of success. A few words as to our present condition, and the quarter in which we most need outside help, may serve to direct this interest where it will do the most good.

The unusually heavy expenses of last year - five new boats being required, and the crew being kept in training for two races - have left us a debt of about twenty-six hundred dollars. Thirty-five hundred has been this year subscribed. Of this, all that has been yet paid in has gone, with one hundred dollars from other sources, to pay off the debt, which has been thereby reduced to about one thousand dollars, - an amount still sufficient to swallow up nearly all that is likely, as experience has shown, to be collected from the subscription-list. The crew will thus be, in a great measure, dependent, for the expenses of this year, upon outside resources, - boat-club theatricals, generosity of graduates, additional subscriptions, and the like, - and will, unless the receipts from this direction are most liberal, be seriously hampered by lack of funds. Where this poverty will be unavoidably and disastrously felt is in the matter of new boats; and it is here that the graduates can best help us, here that they can best prove the interest they profess in us, and best establish a foundation for the right they claim of influencing the boating policy of Alma Mater; for representation without taxation is as unjust as taxation without representation.

Successful crews are accustomed, as the only means of securing a fast boat, to try several from the best builders, and then select the fastest; for builders universally admit that the making of a very fast boat is more a matter of luck than of science and rule. We ought to have three boats to select from, - one from England, one from Blakey, and one paper. Of these, the College will certainly get one, probably that from Blakey; for the paper boat, we can hardly hope; but the boat from England, where the building of shells has been most perfected, is imperatively needed, and for this we can look only to graduates; and it is to procure this that their assistance is sought. That it will not be sought in vain, the experience of last summer assures us. Then, when our crew, defeated, deserted, and disorganized, were left to row the Saratoga race in the racked and worthless boat of the previous year, in which their practice time, with the best effort, the crew think, that they ever made, was eighteen minutes, the graduates stepped into the breach, and straightway a new boat came from Blakey's shop, and we were saved from utter defeat.

Their assistance, however, came so late that it failed to receive the reward it merited. The new boat was hastily constructed and hastily forwarded, and reached Saratoga twisted and unfit for use. There were many repairs to be made, and all too little time for practice; and during the race an accident occurred, arising from this hasty construction and lack of time for repairs, which seriously affected the crew's time, and, there is good reason to suppose, their position. The value of the assistance was almost nullified by the delay with which it was given. Let it be this year realized that the English boat will cost the same, whenever it is bought, and that, ordered now, it will prove of the greatest importance; ordered four months hence, it will be useless. Furthermore, if procured now, it can be used by Blakey as a model for the construction of the other boat, a point which doubles its value. Such a gift from the graduates will not prove undeserved. Our crew are of good promise; and they are now working faithfully and doing all in their power to insure success. That their efforts will be rendered useless by a tardiness of support, through the negligence of their friends, is a danger against which the graduates, on their side, must jealously guard; and we therefore earnestly call upon them to come forward, now, in good season, and do the part which we have good reason to expect of them, toward bringing the victorious colors whither they have so often come.