DANGERS OF BATHING.

AS the warm weather raises the waters of the creeks and rivers to the temperature so inviting to the boys of the republic, a few instructive and general suggestions relative to bathing in the streams may prove the means of saving some juvenile lives. Boys are proverbially rash and reckless in almost everything they do, and are so apt to overdo whatever they undertake, except sawing wood or fastening the front gate, that too much wholesome advice on the benefits of abstinence can never be amiss in their cases. And especially is such advice necessary in regard to bathing, for when a boy makes up his mind to “go swimming,” he thinks of nothing in the world except getting into the water. And every year so many precious lives are endangered, and so much pain and misery caused by boyish, carelessness and thoughtlessness in this respect, that it is a solemn and important duty of journalism to warn the boys of the dangers that wait upon bathing parties, and instruct them how to avoid them. We therefore give a few rules, culled from the pages of personal experience, which, if properly observed by the boys of America, may save them no one can tell how much misery and suffering.

1. Always ask your mother if you may go down to the river with the boys to hunt carnelians. Mention the names of Sammie Johnson, and Robbie Gregg, and Ellis Haskell and Johnnie Chalmers, and Charlie Austin, and Wallie Colburn, and Dockie Worthington, all well-known “good boys,” who wash their faces every morning, keep their clothes clean, wear white-collars, and don’t say bad words, as the young gentlemen who are to comprise the party. A judicious and strict adherence to this rule has often obtained the necessary parental permission to visit the river shore, which would otherwise be sternly denied, especially if it should appear that Bill Slamup, and Tom Dobbins, and Jim Sikes, and Butch Tinker, and Mickey McCann, were the alternates who were confidently expected to represent the first named delegates in the convention.

2. Avoid going into the river in the vicinity of a lumber yard. The temptation to take pine boards from the lumber piles to swim on is too strong for many boys to resist. It is very pleasant, we know, to swim around on a nice broad plank, but the lumbermen do not always like it, and we have known a rough board, abruptly drawn from beneath the horizontal figure of a kicking, paddling, laughing boy, to fill him with remorse and slivers to an extent that would appear incredible were it not for the fact that the boy who loses his plank in this way has plenty of time to count his slivers as he pulls them out.

We knew a boy, twenty years ago, who swam off a plank in this way, and immediately afterward sat down on the sandy shore, and amid the unfeeling laughter and mocking sympathy of his colleagues, withdrew from his cuticle, beginning at the chin and ending at the toes, three hundred and seventeen well-developed average slivers, and four of a larger variety, denominated snags. And sometimes we wake up in the night, from happy dreams of childhood’s guileless days, and half believe we didn’t get all those slivers out then.

3. Avoid putting a bar of kitchen soap in your pocket before you leave home. It frequently gives the bather away entirely, being quickly missed from the sink, and readily detected about the person. And even if you get it safely to the river, and the first boy who “soaps himself” does not lose it in twenty feet of water, the “strocky” appearance of your hair, on your return home, instantly betrays the recent and extravagant use of resin soap, and grave consequences are apt to follow. Besides, you do not really need the soap, as is attested by your well-known aversion to it at home.

4. If convenient, bathe very near a railroad bridge. Then, when a passenger train comes thundering by, you can rush out of the water and dance and shriek on the bank. Travelers like this; and if your uncle Jasper, from Waterloo, or your father returning from Creston, should happen to be on the train and recognize you, they will tell you what the passengers said about it, and your father will be so pleased that he will assist you in a little physical exercise, so essential to the health after bathing. And then the next time you go in swimming you can show the boys your back—a spectacle in which they will take fiendish delight, which they will exhibit by imitating, in most expressive pantomime, the contortions, gestures, and outcries in which you were supposed to have indulged while your father was putting that back on you.

5. If you desire to get up a crowd to go swimming, signify your wishes by holding up your right hand, with the first and second fingers erect and spread apart like a letter V, and as many good boys as are ready, willing and anxious to run away and go with you, will respond by the same sign, and the party can easily be made up without fear of detection, in the presence of the unsuspecting preceptor, who is a graduate of a private school, and never had any fun.

6. Should any boy be so lost to honor as to desire to leave the water before the rest of the crowd wish to do so, he may be easily induced to return to the liquid element by gently tossing a handful of dry sand or dust upon his back, as nearly between the shoulders as may be. If there is a really good, unsophisticated boy in the crowd whose habit of wearing a white collar and carrying a clean handkerchief pronounces him a haughty aristocrat, the bad boys by getting dressed first and judiciously applying the sand to him as often as he “comes out,” can keep him in the water until his father comes to look for him. Then, the next afternoon he goes down with you to the river, you can look at his back, and have your revenge.

7. If a boy lingers in the water too long, it is sometimes advisable, in order that he may learn to abstain from indulging himself to such an intemperate extent in the future, to tie each sleeve of his shirt in a most terrific hard knot, right at the elbow. When this knot is dipped into the water, and a boy gets at each end of the sleeve, braces his feet and pulls for life, it may be drawn so tightly that it can not be drawn out with a stump machine. The boy who belongs to that shirt, after many vain endeavors, is either compelled to cut off the sleeves, or, multis cum lachrymis, go home with it buttoned around his neck and hanging down his back, like a drunken apron. This gives him away, bad, and the appearance of that weeping boy, plodding timorously and apprehensively homeward through the gloaming, and the variegated aspect of his back the next night, produce such a pleasant impression upon you, that for two weeks afterward, as your dear mother looks in at your room door, and sees you smiling in your sleep, she thinks the angels are whispering to you.

8. The most approved method of drying the hair is to shake it up rapidly with a pine stick. Never comb your hair smoothly before going home, no matter who offers to loan you a pocket-comb. A slick head of hair excites suspicion in the family circle on sight.

9. If, at the supper-table, the dreadful discovery is made by your mother or sister that your shirt is wrong side out, the best way to do is to own right up. Excuses are useless; and no mother or father of ordinary intelligence was ever misled by the assertion, however solemnly made, that the shirt was turned by reason of the boy too suddenly climbing a fence instead of going through the gate.

10. To get water out of your ears, lean your head over to one side, and kick out violently with one leg, while you pound your head smartly with the palm of your hand. It is an exploded fallacy that holding a warm stone to the ear will bring out the water.

There are some other rules which might be added to the above, but they are comparatively unimportant, and are so generally known that you can learn them by applying for information to the first bad boy you meet.