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mature incest |
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Ut the ocean is a poor excuse
for a swimming-hole.They say salt-water is easier to swim in; kind
of bears you up more.Maybe so, but I never could see it; and even
so, if it does, that slight advantage is more than made up for by
the manifold disadvantages entailed.First place, there's the tide
to figure on.If it was high tide last Wednesday at half-past ten
in the morning, what time will it be high tide today?A boy can't
always go when he wants to, and it is no fun to trudge away down to
the beach only to find half a mile of soft, gawmy mud between him
and the water.And he can't go in wherever it is deep enough and
nobody lives near.People own the beach away out under water, and
where he is allowed to go in may be a perfect submarine jungle of
eel-grass or bottomed with millions of razor-edged barnacles that
rip the soles of his feet into bleeding rags.Then, too, when one
swims, more or less water gets into one's nose and mouth.River-water
may not be exactly what a fastidious person would choose to drink
habitually, but there is this in its favor as compared with sea-water:
it will stay down after it is swallowed; also, it doesn't gum up your
hair; also, if you want to take a cake of soap with you, all you have
to look out for is that you don't lose the soap.Nobody tries to
use toilet soap in sea-water more than once.
And surf-bathing!If there is a bigger swindle than surf-bathing,
the United States Postal authorities haven't heard of it yet.It is
all very well for the women.They can hang on to the ropes and
squeal at the big waves and have a perfectly lovely time.Some of
the really daring ones crouch down till they actually get their
shoulder-blades wet.You have to see that for yourself to believe
it, but it is as true as I am sitting here.They do so - some of
them.But good land!There's no swimming in surf-bathing, no fun
for a man.The water is all bouncing up and down.One second it
is over head and hands, and the next second it is about to your
knees, with a malicious undertow tickling your feet and tugging at
your ankles; and growling: "Aw, you think you're some, don't you?
Yes.Well, for half a cent wouldn't take you out and drown you,."And
I don't like the looks of that boat patrolling up and down between
the ropes and the raft.It is too suggestive, too like the skeleton
at the banquet, too blunt a reminder that maybe what the undertow
growls is not all a bluff.
Another drawback to the ocean as a swimming-hole is that the
distances are all wrong.If you want to go to the other side of the
"crick" you must take a steamboat.There is no such thing as
bundling up your clothes and holding them out of water with one hand
while you swim with the other, perhaps dropping your knife or
necktie in transit.I have never been on the other side of the
"crick" even on a steamboat, but I am pretty sure that there are no
yellow-hammers' nests over there or watermelon patches.There were
above the dam.At the seaside they give you as an objective point
a raft, anchored at what seems only a little distance from where it
gets deep enough to swim in, but which turns out to be a mighty far
ways when the water bounces so.When you.
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