Back Home Part 6

*[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 Snodgra.s.s, 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 n.o.body 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-gra.s.s 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. n.o.body 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, anch.o.r.ed 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.

I tell you the ocean is altogether too big. Some profess to admire it on that account, but it is my belief that they do it to be in style.

I admit that on a bright, blowy day, when you can sit and watch the shining sails far out on the horizon's rim, it does look right nice, but I account for it in this way: it puts you in mind of some of these expensive oil paintings, and that makes you think it is kind of high cla.s.s. And another thing: It recalls the picture in the joggerfy that proved the earth was round because the hull of a ship disappears before the sails, as it would if the ship was going over a hill. You sweep your eye along where the sky and water meet, and it seems you can note the curvature of the earth. Maybe it is that, and maybe it is all in your own eye. I am not saying.

There are good points, too, about the sea on a clear night when the moon is full; or when there is no moon, and the phosph.o.r.escence in the water shows, as if mermaids' children were playing with blue-tipped matches. I like to see it when a gale is blowing, and the white caps race. Yes, and when it is a flat calm, with here and there a tiny cat's-paw crinkling the water into gray-green crepe. And also when--but there! it is no use cataloguing all kinds of weather and all hours of the day and night.

What I don't approve of in the ocean is its everlasting bigness. It is so discouraging. It makes a body seem so no-account and insignificant.

You come away feeling meaner than a sheep-killing dog. "Oh, what's the use?" you say to yourself. "What's the use of my breaking my neck to do anything or be anybody? Before I was born--before History began--before any foot of being that could be called a man trod these sands, the waves beat thus the pulse of time. When I am gone--when all that man has made, that seems so firm and everlasting, shall have crumbled into the earth, whence it sprang, this wave, so momentary and so eternal, shall still surge up the slanting beach, and trail its lacy mantle in retreat.... O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence, and be no more seen."

And that's no way for a man to feel. He ought to be confident and sure of himself. If he hasn't yet done all that he laid out to do, he should feel that it is in him to do it, and that he will before the time comes for him to go, and that when it is done it shall be orth while.

It is the ocean's everlasting bigness that makes it so cold to swim in.

At the seaside bathing pavilions they have a blackboard whereon they chalk up "70" or "72" or whatever they think folks will like. They never say in so many words that a man went down into the water and held a thermometer in it long enough to get the true temperature, but they lead you to believe it. All I have to say is that they must have very optimistic thermometers. I just wish some of these poor little seash.o.r.e boys could have a chance to try the Old Swimming-hole up above the dam.

Certainly along about early going-barefoot time the water is a little cool, but you take it in the middle of August--ah, I tell you! When you come out of the water then you don't have to run up and down to get your blood in circulation or pile the warm sand on yourself or hunt for the steam-room. Only thing is, if you stay in all day, as you want to, it thins your blood, and you get the "fever 'n' ager." But you can stay in as long as you want to, that 's the point, without your lips turning the color of a chicken's gizzard.

And there's this about the Old Swimming-hole, or there was in my day: There were no women and girls fussing around aid squalling: "Now, you stop splashin' water on me! Quit it now! Quee-yut!" I don't think t looks right for women folks to have anything to do with water in large quant.i.ties. On a sail-boat, now, they are the very--but perhaps we had better not go into that. At a picnic, indeed, trey used to take off their shoes and stockings and paddle their feet in the water, but that was as much as ever they did. They never thought of going in swimming.

Even at the seash.o.r.e, now when Woman is so emanc.i.p.ated, they go bathing not swimming. I don't like to see a woman swim any more than I like to see a woman smoke a cigar. And for the same reason. It is more fun than she is ent.i.tled to. A woman's place is home minding the baby, and cooking the meals. Nothing would do her but she had to be born a woman, she had the same liberty of choice that we men had. Very well, I say, let her take the consequencies.

It is only natural, then, that she should refuse to let her boys go swimming. She pays off her grudge that way. Just because she can't go herself she is bound the they shan't either. She says they will get drowned, but we know about that. It is only an excuse to keep them from having a little fun. She has to say something. They won't get drowned.

Why, the idea! They haven't the least intention of any such thing.

"Well, but Robbie, supposing you couldn't help yourself?"

"How couldn't help myself?"

"Why, get the cramps. Suppose you got the cramps, then what?"

"Aw, pshaw! Cramps nothin'! They hain't no sich of a thing. And, anyhow, if I did get 'em, wouldn't jist kick 'em right out. This way."

"Now, Robbie, you know you did have a terrible cramp in your foot just only the other night. Don't you remember?"

"Aw, that! That ain't nothin'. That ain't the cramps that drownds people. Didn't I tell you wouldn't fist kick it right out? That's what they all do when they git the cramps. But they don't n.o.body git 'em now no more."

"I don't want you to go in the water and get drowned. You know you can't swim."

This is too much. Oh, this is rank injustice! Worse yet, it is bad logic.

"How 'm I ever goin' to learn if you don't let me go to learn?"

"Well, you can't go, and that's the end of it."

Isn't that just like a woman? Perfectly unreasonable! Dear! dear!

"Now, Ma, listen here. S'posin' we was all goin' some place on a steamboat, me and you and Pa and the baby and all of us, and--"

"That won't ever happen, I guess."

"CAN'T YOU LET ME TELL YOU? And s'posin' the boat was to sink, and I could swim and save you from drown--"

"You're not going swimming, and that's all there is about it."

"Other boys' mas lets them go. I don't see why I can't go."

No answer.

"Ma, won't you let me go? I won't get drowned, hope to die if I do. Ma, won't you let me go? Ma! Ma-a!--Maw-ah!"

"Stop yelling at me that way. Good land! Do you think I'm deaf?"

"Won't you let me go? Please, won't you let--"

"No, I won't. I told you I wouldn't, and I mean it. You might as well make up your mind to stay at home, for you're--not--going. Hush up now.

This instant, sir! Robbie, do you hear me? Stop crying. Great baby!

wouldn't be ashamed to cry that way, as big as you are!"

Mean old Ma! Guess she'd cry too'f she could see the other kids that waited for him to go and ask her--if she could see them moving off, tired of waiting. They're 'most up to Lincoln Avenue.

"Oooooooooooo-hoo--hoo--hoo--hoohoooooooooo-ah! I wanna gow-ooooo."

"Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?"

"Oooooooooooo-hoo-hoo-hoo-oooooooo! I wanna gow-ooooooo."

"Robbie! Did you hoe that corn?"

The last boy, the one with the stone-bruise on his heel, limps around the corner. They have all the fun. His ma won't let him go barefoot because it spreads his feet.

"Robbie! Answer me."

"Mam?"

"Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?"

"Yes mam."

"All of it? Did you hoe all of it?"