F 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 ren 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 c.