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Show KNOWING HOW TO SWIM. The recent disasters on the water have conclusively proved the advantages of the art of swimming. Those who were conscious of their ability to swim were cool in more than one sense of the work; for they not only were not only panic-stricken, but they did not burn. Even those who can but just float in the water feel that they have resources which others do not share. Among the passengers on the Seawanhaka was Mr. Samuel Barlow, of New York, who having provided himself with a life preserver, gave it away to another passenger and dropped into the water. He turned himself upon his back and floated, managing to keep his nose above water until he was rescued. All the passengers who could swim, or at least who did swim, reached the shore in safety.<br><br> It would reinforce persons, otherwise liable to be fear stricken, with assurance, enabling them to take measures for saving themselves. If, for example, the water were not an absolute terror to one-half or three-fourths of the passengers, when a collision occurs of a fire breaks out, they would, with some degree of carefulness and deliberation, set about lowering the boats. They could exercise their reason and take precautions, would look to see if the plugs were all on, and would lower the boats, perhaps, without emptying everybody out or filling the boats with water. On the Narragansett one of the boats was lowered while the plug on the bottom, allowing the rain water to run away, was out, and the boat filled. The patent plug, which, by the pressing of the water on the bottom is forced home ought to be used in all boats, but it is not, and a little caution and preservation of the mental balance on the part of the passengers would avoid those unnecessary dangers.<br><br>' It is not merely, therefore, that the art of swimming will save the lives of voyagers, but the familiarity with the water and the consciousness that one can, even when he must take to the water, support himself in it for a time at least and until help comes, would prevent the dreadful panics to which more than to the disaster itself the great loss of life is due. Should every man, and every woman and every child old enough to learn, be aware that as soon as they touched the water they could support themselves in it, nearly all of the immediate danger would disappear. A swimmer, too, can use even a life preserver to better advantage than one ignorant of the art.<br><br> Of course, swimmers drown sometimes, but the proportion is very small, and it happens quite as often that it is the boy that cannot swim who is drowned while in bathing. The number of swimmers that are drowned is very much smaller than the number of non-swimmers who are drowned while bathing or sailing.<br><br> A Boston citizen offers to devote an hour or more every day to teaching the boys of the public schools in that city how to swim, and it is quite as important an accomplishment, if it be not a necessity, as many of the branches of knowledge now taught at our public schools. But it ought by no means to be confined to the boys. It is quite as necessary that girls should know how to swim. [line unreadable] enabled the daughter [line unreadable] distinguished citizens, both of whom are now gone, to save not only her own life but the lives of others at the time of the collision between the steamers Meteor and Pewabic on Lake Superior fifteen years ago. So many of the inhabitants of the States bordering on the lakes sail upon them either for business or for pleasure, that it should be essentially a part of their education to know how to swim.-Detroit Press. |