test favorites. My boy
could not remember when he began to go into them, though it certainly
was before he could swim. There was a time when he was afraid of getting
in over his head; but he did not know just when he learned to swim, any
more than he knew when he learned to read; he could not swim, and then
he could swim; he could not read, and then he could read; but I dare say
the reading came somewhat before the swimming. Yet the swimming must
have come very early, and certainly it was kept up with continual
practise; he swam quite as much as he read; perhaps more. The boys had
deep swimming-holes and shallow ones; and over the deep ones there was
always a spring-board, from which they threw somersaults, or dived
straight down into the depths, where there were warm and cold currents
mysteriously interwoven. They believed that these deep holes were
infested by water-snakes, though they never saw any, and they expected
to be bitten by snapping-turtles, though this never happened. Fiery
dragons could not have kept them out; gallynippers, whatever they were,
certainly did not; they were believed to abound at the bottom of the
deep holes; but the boys never stayed long in the deep holes, and they
preferred the shallow places, where the river broke into a long ripple
(they called it riffle) on its gravelly bed, and where they could at
once soak and bask in the musical rush of the sunlit waters. I have
heard people in New England blame all the Western rivers for being
yellow and turbid; but I know that after the spring floods, when the
Miami had settled down to its summer business with the boys, it was as
clear and as blue as if it were spilled out of the summer sky. The boys
liked the riffle because they could stay in so long there, and there
were little land-locked pools and shallows, where the water was even
warmer, and they could stay in longer. At most places under the banks
there was clay of different colors, which they used for war-paint in
their Indian fights; and after they had their Indian fights they could
rush screaming and clattering into the riffle. When the stream had
washed them clean down to their red sunburn or their leathern tan, they
could paint up again and have more Indian fights.

I wonder what sign the boys who read this have for challenging or
inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used
to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the
forefinger and midd