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.
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