Regatta

Little boats with long arms and needle bodies leaped like water-spiders along the glassy Schuylkill at Philadelphia. Some were grandfather spiders, with eight arms and a monotonous chirrup--" 'Roak, 'Roak, 'Roak"; others, tiny creatures whose two arms seemed scarcely to impinge upon the mirror of that dreaming river, so swiftly, so skilfully did they compete in the Annual Regatta of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen.

Swiftest of the big bugs was an eight-armed water-dragonfly from the Pennsylvania Barge Club, stroked by brawny Charles Karle, coached by Jim Juvenal. With four large fellows among them who, the day before, had driven a winning four-armed body, they beat by three-quarters of a length the barge of the Duluth Boat Club.

Skirting the crowd-freighted western shore, spurting ahead at an incredible pace in the last 50 yards, Algeron Fitzpatrick retained his championship in the senior quarter-mile dash. Four feet behind him came W. E. Garrett Gilmore; and last of all was the baby bug whose fame was chiefly responsible for making 20,000 people stand at the river's edge that hot afternoon--Walter M. Hoover formerly of Duluth, now of the Undine Barge Club of Philadelphia. But he, in the finals of the single sculls, did what he had come to do. His shiny yellow arms dipped with an incomparable rhythm, his green body slid along the water a length in front of Russell Codman Jr. of Boston with Paul Costello of Pennsylvania two feet behind Codman.