ight myself in a way some would
call "instinct," rise among the waves, catch my breath, and try to plan
what would better be done. Never was victory over self more complete. I
have been a good swimmer ever since. At a slow gait I think I could
swim all day in smooth water moderate in temperature. When I was a
student at Madison, I used to go on long swimming-journeys, called
exploring expeditions, along the south shore of Lake Mendota, on
Saturdays, sometimes alone, sometimes with another amphibious explorer
by the name of Fuller.

My adventures in Fountain Lake call to mind the story of a boy who in
climbing a tree to rob a crow's nest fell and broke his leg, but as
soon as it healed compelled himself to climb to the top of the tree he
had fallen from.

Like Scotch children in general we were taught grim self-denial, in
season and out of season, to mortify the flesh, keep our bodies in
subjection to Bible laws, and mercilessly punish ourselves for every
fault imagined or committed. A little boy, while helping his sister to
drive home the cows, happened to use a forbidden word. "I'll have to
tell fayther on ye," said the horrified sister. "I'll tell him that ye
said a bad word." "Weel," said the boy, by way of excuse, "I couldna
help the word comin' into me, and it's na waur to speak it oot than to
let it rin through ye."

A Scotch fiddler playing at a wedding drank so much whiskey that on
the way home he fell by the roadside. In the morning he was ashamed
and angry and determined to punish himself. Making haste to the house
of a friend, a gamekeeper, he called him out, and requested the loan
of a gun. The alarmed gamekeeper, not liking the fiddler's looks and
voice, anxiously inquired what he was going to do with it. "Surely,"
said he, "you're no gan to shoot yoursel." "No-o," with characteristic
candor replied the penitent fiddler, "I dinna think that I'll juist
exactly kill mysel, but I'm gaun to tak a dander doon the burn (brook)
wi' the gun and gie mysel a deevil o' a fleg (fright)."

One calm summer evening a red-headed woodpecker was drowned in our
lake. The accident happened at the south end, opposite our memorable
swimming-hole, a few rods from the place where I came so near being
drowned years before. I had returned to the old home during a summer
vacation of the State University, and, having made a beginning in
botany, I was, of course, full of enthusiasm and ran eagerly to my
beloved pogonia, calopogon,