I set my teeth and vow I just will dive from ten feet
above the water, and every time it gets down to a poor, picayune
dive off the lowest round of the ladder. I blame my early education
for it. I was taught to be careful about pitching myself head
foremost on rocks and broken bottles. I used to think it was a fine
swimming-hole, and that I was having a grand, good time, well worth
any ordinary licking; but now that I have traveled around and seen
things, I know that it was a poor, provincial, country-jake affair
after all. The first time I swam across and back without "letting
down" it was certainly an immense place, but when I went back there
a year ago last summer - why, pshaw! it wasn't anything at all. It
was a dry summer, I admit, but not as dry as all that. A poor,
pitiful, provincial, two-for-a cent - and yet . . . and yet . . .
And yet I sat there after I had dressed, and mused upon the former
things - the life that was, but never could be again; the Eden
before whose gate was a flaming sword turning every way. The night
was still and moonless. The Milky Way slanted across the dark dome
above. It was far from the street lamps that greened among the
leafy maples in the silent streets. Gushes of air stirred the
fluttering sycamore, and whispered in the tall larches that marched
down the boundary line of the Blymire property.
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