Note Return to text — Front matter

The uses of swimming are obvious. To be drowned by the upsetting of a pleasure boat within a few yards of the shore—can anything be more pitiful? To see our friend, perhaps our child, perish because we cannot swim a few yards to save him—can anything be more painful? Think of the number of lives that have been lost by inability to swim, of the number of lives that have been saved by the possession of this faculty. He who cannot swim is as far from being perfectly educated as he who cannot walk.[Footnote 1]