all of sound to conceal retreat into the back alley,
across the street, up the alley back of Alexander's, and so on up
to Fountain Avenue in time to catch up with the gang, still I regard
swimming as an exercise of the extremest value in the development of the
growing boy. It builds up every muscle. It is particularly beneficial
to the lungs. To have a good pair of lungs is the same thing as having
a good constitution. It is nice to have a healthy boy, and it is nice to
have an obedient boy, but if one must choose which he will have--that's
a very difficult question. I think it should be left to the casuists.
Nevertheless, now is the boy's only chance to grow. He will have
abundant opportunities to learn obedience.

In the last analysis there are two ways of acquiring the art of
swimming, the sudden way and the slow way. I have never personally known
anybody that learned in the sudden way, but I have heard enough about it
to describe it. It it's the quickest known method. One day the boy its
among the gibbering white monkeys at the river's edge, content to splash
in the water that comes but half way to his crouching knees. The next
day he swims with the big boys as bold as any of them. In the meantime
his daddy has taken him out in a boat, out where it is deep--Oh! Ain't
it deep there?--and thrown him overboard. The boat is kept far enough
away to be out of the boy's reach and yet near enough to be right there
in case anything happens. (I like that "in case anything happens." It
sounds so cheerful.) It being what Aristotle defines as "a ground-hog
case," the boy learns to swim immediately. He has to.

It seems reasonable that he should. But still and all, I don't just
fancy it. Once when a badly scared man grabbed me by the arms in deep
water I had the fear of drowning take hold of my soul, and it isn't a
nice feeling at all. Somehow when I hear folks praising up this method
of teaching a child to swim, I seem to hear the little fellow's screams
that he doesn't want to be thrown into the water. I can see him clinging
to his father for protection, and finding that heart hard and unpitying.
I can see his fingernails whiten with his clutch on anything that gives
a hand-hold. His father strips off his grip, at first with boisterous
laughter, and then with hot anger at the little fool. He calls him a
cry-baby, and slaps his mouth for him, to stop his noise. The little
body sprawls in the air and strikes with a loud splash, a