men and girls fussing around aid squalling: "Now, you
stop splashin' water on me! Quit it now! Quee-yut!" I don't think t
looks right for women folks to have anything to do with water in large
quantities. On a sail-boat, now, they are the very--but perhaps we had
better not go into that. At a picnic, indeed, trey used to take off
their shoes and stockings and paddle their feet in the water, but that
was as much as ever they did. They never thought of going in swimming.
Even at the seashore, now when Woman is so emancipated, they go bathing
not swimming. I don't like to see a woman swim any more than I like to
see a woman smoke a cigar. And for the same reason. It is more fun
than she is entitled to. A woman's place is home minding the baby, and
cooking the meals. Nothing would do her but she had to be born a woman,
she had the same liberty of choice that we men had. Very well, I say,
let her take the consequencies.

It is only natural, then, that she should refuse to let her boys go
swimming. She pays off her grudge that way. Just because she can't go
herself she is bound the they shan't either. She says they will get
drowned, but we know about that. It is only an excuse to keep them from
having a little fun. She has to say something. They won't get drowned.
Why, the idea! They haven't the least intention of any such thing.

"Well, but Robbie, supposing you couldn't help yourself?"

"How couldn't help myself?"

"Why, get the cramps. Suppose you got the cramps, then what?"

"Aw, pshaw! Cramps nothin'! They hain't no sich of a thing. And, anyhow,
if I did get 'em, wouldn't jist kick 'em right out. This way."

"Now, Robbie, you know you did have a terrible cramp in your foot just
only the other night. Don't you remember?"

"Aw, that! That ain't nothin'. That ain't the cramps that drownds
people. Didn't I tell you wouldn't fist kick it right out? That's what
they all do when they git the cramps. But they don't nobody git 'em now
no more."

"I don't want you to go in the water and get drowned. You know you can't
swim."

This is too much. Oh, this is rank injustice! Worse yet, it is bad
logic.

"How 'm I ever goin' to learn if you don't let me go to learn?"

"Well, you can't go, and that's the end of it."

Isn't that just like a woman? Perfectly unreasonable! Dear! dear!

"Now, Ma, listen here. S'posin' we was all goin' some place on a
steamboat, me and you and Pa and the baby and all of us, and--"

"That won