第21章 THE SWIMMING-HOLE(1)

It is agreed by all, I think, that the two happiest periods in a man's life are his boyhood and about ten years from now. We are exactly in the position described in the hymn:

"Lo! On a narrow neck of land 'Twixt two unbounded seas we stand, And cast a wishful eye."**[I am told, on good authority, that this last line of the three belongs to another hymn. As it is just what I want to say, I'm going to let it stand as it is.]

If I remember right, the hymn went to the tune of "Ariel," and I can see John Snodgrass, the precentor, sneaking a furtive C from his pitch-pipe, finding E flat and then sol, and standing up to lead the singing, paddling the air gently with: Down, left, sing. Well, no matter about that now. What I am trying to get at, is that we have all a lost Eden in the past and a Paradise Regained in the future.

'Twixt two unbounded seas of happiness we stand on the narrow and arid sand-spit of the present and cast a wishful eye. In hot weather particularly the wishful eye, when directed toward the lost Eden of boyhood, lights on and lingers near the Old Swimming-hole.

I suppose boys do grow up into a reasonable enjoyment of their faculties in big seaside cities and on inland farms where there is no accessible body of water larger than a wash-tub, but I prefer to believe that the majority of our adult male population in youth went in swimming in the river up above the dam, where the big sycamore spread out its roots a-purpose for them to climb out on without muddying their feet. Some, I suppose, went in at the Copperas Banks below town, where the current had dug a hole that was "over head and hands," but that was pretty far and almost too handy for the boys from across the tracks.

The wash-tub fellows will have to be left out of it entirely. It was an inferior, low-grade Eden they had anyhow, and if they lost it, why, they 're not out very much that I can see. And I rather pity the boys that lived by the sea. They had a good time in their way, I suppose, with sailboats and things, but 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 get there, blowing like a quarter-horse and weighing nine tons as you lift yourself out, there is nothing to do but let your feet hang over while you get rested enough to swim back. It wasn't like that above the dam.