A NEW ENGLAND BOYHOOD

I. The Swimming School

Joy, joy, joy! Of a hot summer day in June, when I was nine years old, I was asked how I would like to learn to swim. Little doubt in the mind of any boy who reads this what my answer was. I and my elder brother, who was twelve, were to be permitted to go to the swimming school. This was joy enough to have that year marked with red in our history.

The swimming school was in water that flowed where Brimmer Street [Boston] and the houses behind it are now built. It was just such a building as the floating baths are now, which the city maintains, but it inclosed a much larger space. Of this space a part had a floor so that the water flowed through; the depth was about five feet. To little boys like me it made little difference that there was this floor, for we could be as easily drowned in five feet of water as we could in fifteen.

As soon as you were dressed and ready-and this meant in about one minute-you took your turn to be taught. A belt was put around you under the arms; to this belt a rope was attached, and you were told to jump in. You jumped in and went down as far as gravity chose to take you, and were then pulled up by the rope. The rope was then attached to the end of a long belt, and you were swung out upon the surface of the water. Then began the instruction.

"O-n-e!-two, three!" the last two words were spoken with great rapidity-"one" spoken very slowly. This meant that the knees and feet were to be drawn up very slowly, but were

to be dashed out very quickly, and then the heels brought together as quickly.

Boys who were well built for it and who were quick, learned to swim in two or three lessons. Slender boys and little boys who had not much muscular force-and such was I-were a whole summer before they could be trusted without the rope. But the training was excellent, and from the end of that year till now I have been entirely at home in the water.

I think now that scientific and systematic training in swimming is a very important part of public instruction, and I wish we could see it introduced everywhere where there is responsible oversight of boys at school.

II. Out of Doors

For the half-holidays that were not otherwise provided for, my brother and I took care by using "the means which God and nature put into our hands." That is to say, we walked out of town to such woodland generally as we had not explored before, until we were personally acquainted with the whole country for a circle of fully five miles' radius around the State House.

We always kept for such expeditions what were known as phosphorus-boxes, which were the first steps in the progress that has put the tinder-boxes of that day entirely out of sight. Most of the young people of the present day have not so much as seen a tinder-box, and I do not know where I could go to buy one. But, in the working of the household, the tinder-box was the one resource for getting a light.

We boys, however, with the lavishness of boys, used to buy

at the apothecary's phosphorus-boxes, which were then coming in. We had to pay twenty-five cents for one such box. These boxes were made in Germany; they were of red paper, little cylinders about four inches high and an inch in diameter. You could carry one, and were meant to carry it, in your breast pocket.

In the bottom of the box was a little bottle, which contained asbestos soaked with sulphuric acid, and in the top were about a hundred matches, made, I think, from chlorate of potash. One of these you put into the bottle and pulled it out aflame. We never should have thought of taking one of these walks without a phosphorus-box.

When we arrived at the woodland sought, we invariably made a little fire. We never cooked anything that I remember, but this love of fire is one of the early barbarisms of the human race which dies out latest. I suppose if it had been the middle of the hottest day in August we should have made a fire.

So soon as the morning session of school was over, in the summer or autumn months, if it were a half-holiday, we would start on one of these rambles. Sometimes, if the walk was not to a great distance, we invited, or permitted, the two sisters to come with us. We had a tin box for plants, and always brought home what seemed new or pretty.

When, in 1833, the Worcester Railroad was opened, this walking gave way, for a family as largely interested in that railroad as we were, to excursions out of town to the point where the walk was to begin. The line to West Newton was opened to the public on the 7th of April, 1833, but from the day when the Meteor, which was the first locomotive engine in New England, ran on her trial trip, we two boys were

generally present at the railroad, on every half-holiday, to take our chances for a ride out upon one of the experimental trips.

We knew the engine-drivers and the men who were not yet called conductors, and they knew us. My father was the president of the road, and we thought we did pretty much as we chose. The engine-drivers would let us ride with them on the engine, and I, for one, got my first lessons in the business of driving an engine on these excursions. But as soon as the road was open to passengers, these rides on the engine dropped off, perhaps were prohibited. Still we went to Newton in the train as often as we could, and afterwards to Needham.

There were varied cars in those days, some of them open, like our open horse-cars of to-day, and all of them entered from the side, as in England up to the present time. After this date our long walks out of town naturally ceased. Nothing was more common in our household than for the whole family to go out to Brighton or to Newton, and, with babies and all, to establish ourselves in some grove, where we spent the afternoon very much as God meant we should spend it, I suppose; returning late in the evening with such spoils of wild flowers as the season permitted.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

grav'i-ty, the attraction of the phospho-rus, a substance burning

EDWARD EVERETT HALE, an American author, editor, and clergyman, was born in Boston in 1822. His father was a nephew of Nathan Hale, the American patriot who was executed as a spy by the British in 1776. Among Dr. Hale's works are "The Man Without a Country," "Ninety Days' Worth of Europe,” “Philip Nolan's Friends, "and a number of boys' books, one of which is "New England Boyhood," from which these selections are taken, by courtesy of Little, Brown and Company.

Write an account of some important invention.

1. Who was the inventor? Where did he live? How did he happen to think of making it? How did he improve his first plans?

2. What was used in place of this invention before it was made? What were the advantages of the invention? How has it been improved?

3. How important is its present use? What would be some of the disadvantages if we had to do without it now?

Find and write out the most important facts in the life of one of these men:

sentences. Combine some of the simple sentences into complex and compound sentences.