第23章 THE SWIMMING-HOLE(3)

"CAN'T YOU LET ME TELL YOU? And s'posin' the boat was to sink, and I could swim and save you from drown - ""You're not going swimming, and that's all there is about it.""Other boys' mas lets them go. I don't see why I can't go."No answer.

"Ma, won't you let me go? I won't get drowned, hope to die if I do.

Ma, won't you let me go? Ma! Ma-a! - Maw-ah!""Stop yelling at me that way. Good land! Do you think I'm deaf?""Won't you let me go? Please, won't you let - ""No, I won't. I told you I wouldn't, and I mean it. You might as well make up your mind to stay at home, for you're - not - going.

Hush up now. This instant, sir! Robbie, do you hear me? Stop crying. Great baby! wouldn't be ashamed to cry that way, as big as you are!"Mean old Ma! Guess she'd cry too'f she could see the other kids that waited for him to go and ask her - if she could see them moving off, tired of waiting. They're 'most up to Lincoln Avenue.

"Oooooooooooo-hoo - hoo - hoo - hoohoooooooooo-ah! I wanna gow-ooooo.""Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?""Oooooooooooo-hoo-hoo-hoo-oooooooo! I wanna gow-ooooooo.""Robbie! Did you hoe that corn?"

The last boy, the one with the stone-bruise on his heel, limps around the corner. They have all the fun. His ma won't let him go barefoot because it spreads his feet.

"Robbie! Answer me."

"Mam?"

"Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?""Yes mam."

"All of it? Did you hoe all of it?"

" Prett' near all of it." Well begun is half done. One hill is a good beginning, and half done is pretty nearly all.

"Go and finish it."

"I will if you'll let me go swimmin'."

It flashes upon him that even now by running he can catch up with the other fellows. He can finishing the hoeing when he gets back.

"You'll do it anyhow, and you're not going swimming. Now, that's the end of it. You march out to that garden this minute, or I'll take a stick to you. And don't let me hear another whimper out of you. Robbie! Come back here and shut that door properly. I shall tell your father how you have acted. wouldn't be ashamed - I'd be ashamed to show temper that way."It says for children to obey their parents, but if more boys minded their mothers there would be fewer able to swim. While I shrink with horror from even seeming to encourage dropping the hoe when the sewing-machine gets to going good, by its thunderous spinning throwing up an impervious wall 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, and the child's gargling cry is strangled by the water whitened by his mad clawings. I can see his head come up, his eyes bulging, and his face distorted with the awful fear that is ours by the inheritance of ages. He will sink and come up again, not three times, but a hundred times. Eventually he will win safe to shore, panting and trembling, his little heart knocking against his ribs, it is true, but lord of the water from that time forth.

It is a very fine method, yes . . . but . . . well, if it was my boy I had just as lief he tarried with the little white monkeys at the river's edge. Let him squeal and crouch and splash and learn how to half drown the other fellow by shooting water at him with the heel of his hand. Let him alone. He will be watching the others swim. He will edge out a little farther and kick up his heels while with his hands he holds on the ground. He will edge out a little farther still and try to keep his feet on the bottom and swim with his hands. Be patient in his attempt to combine the two methods of travel. He is not the only one that fears to be one thing or the other, and regards a mixture of both as the safest way to get along.