all means to imitate my
example, and learn to swim. You know not how soon you may stand in need
of a knowledge of this useful art; how soon you may be called upon to
practise it perforce. You know not but that sooner or later it may be
the means of saving your life.

At the present time, the chances of death by drowning are multiplied far
beyond anything of the kind in past ages. Almost everybody now travels
across seas, oceans, and upon large rivers, and the number of people who
annually risk their lives on the water, voyaging on business, pleasure,
or in the way of emigration, is scarce credible. Of these, a
proportion--in stormy years a large one--perish by drowning.

I do not mean to assert that a swimmer, even the best, if cast away at a
great distance from shore, in mid-Atlantic, for instance, or even in the
middle of the English Channel--would have any prospect of swimming to
land. That, of course, would be impracticable. But there are often
other chances of life being saved, besides that of getting to land. A
boat may be reached, a spar, an empty hencoop or barrel; and there are
many instances on record of lives having been saved by such slight
means. Another vessel, too, may be in sight, may hasten to the scene of
the disaster, and the strong swimmer may be still afloat upon her
arrival; while those who could not swim, must of course have gone to the
bottom.

But you must know that it is neither in the middle of the Atlantic, nor
of any great ocean, that most vessels are wrecked and lives are lost.
Some are, it is true--when a storm rages with extreme fury, "blowing
great guns," as the seamen phrase it, and blowing a ship almost to
atoms. These events, however, are extremely rare, and bear but a small
proportion to the number of wrecks that take place within sight of the
shore, and frequently upon the beach itself. It is in "castaways" of
this kind, that the greatest number of lives are sacrificed, under
circumstances when, by a knowledge of the art of swimming, many of them
might have been saved. Not a year passes, but there is a record of
hundreds of individuals who have been drowned within cable's length of
the shore--ships full of emigrants, soldiers, and sailors, have sunk
with all on board, leaving only a few good swimmers survivors of the
wreck! Similar "accidents" occur in rivers, scarce two hundred yards in
width; and you yourselves are acquainted with the annual drownings, even
in the