But that is kind of common, I think. They told about it at the
swimming-hole above the dam, but nobody was mean enough to do it.
Maybe they did it down at the Copperas Banks below town. The boys
from across the tracks went there, a race apart, whom we feared, and
who hated us, if the legend chalked up on the fences "DAMB THE
PRODESTANCE," meant anything.
Under the slow method of learning to swim one had leisure to
observe the different fashions - dog-fashion and cow-fashion,
steamboat-fashion, and such. The little kids and beginners swam
dog-fashion, which on that account was considered contemptible. The
fellow was sneered at that screwed up his face as if in a cloud of
suffocating dust, and fought the water with noise and fury, putting
forth enough energy to carry him a mile, and actually going about
two feet if he were headed down stream. Scientific men say that
the use of the limbs, first on one side and then on the other, is
instinctive to all creatures of the monkey tribe. That is the way
they do in an emergency, since that is the way to scramble up among
the tree limbs. I know that it is the easiest way to swim, and the
least effective. When the arms are extended together in the breast
stroke, it is as much superior to dogfashion as man is superior to
the ape. I have always thought that to swim thus with steady and
deliberate arm action, the water parting at the chin and rising just
to the root of the underlip, was the most dignified and manly
attitude the human being could put himself in.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115