The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-08-16
The swimmin, Place.

r. j. Burdette in Burlington Ha1skeye
mean swimming placer Not much / do
not mean sWimmin place never heard it
called anything else and I've been right there at
the place, and swum-no, not swan, we didn't
swan in those days, Swun-swum in it a thou
sand times, and You never saw the place I don't
suppose There was one boy, come to think of
it, who called it swimming place. He came
from Vermont; his uncle a. judge OF gov
ernor, or shoemaker, or something of that kind.
He said awftahnoon and grawss and he called
burr buh. He came up to Charley Fittings
with us one sawftahnoonp and said it was a
charming swimming place. and asked Bud Peters
II the swatah was wahm' Bud he told him how
warm it was, and then said it was cooler and
nicer in the shade, right where the big fiat rock
was. And this boy who called it a swimming
place. he went down to the big rock-you re-
member. right under the ice chutel-and jumped
in.
There were two things that combined. as Bud
Peters had truly said, to make the water cooler
for all, and nicer for some purposes right by the
big fat rock. One was living spring of clear,
cold water that came gushing up out of the deep,
cold, sunless cayerns of the earth right there.
The other was the rock was also the terminal
point of a drain from the big ice-houses, and the
water from the melted ice, whenever it melted
mingled its freshness with the limpid currents
of the spring and thus developed latent heat
that couldn't have been much latenter in an ice
berg. As remarked, right here the boy who
called it swimming place jumped in.
Now, if boy feels to say that he would like
to holer | am the one to get up every time and
move the unanimous consent of the house that
he may holler with free course, and no restraint
or embarrassment. So when this boy, after
jumping into about Ave feet Of ice-water, gave
one Mortified gasp that was enough to eurdle the
ice, and then held his breath for second, and
stood with his two eyes standing out past his
nose, and thrust his hands, with all fingers ex
tended, high up in the air, | knew that he was
seized with strange, morbid desire to make
little noise, so said to my comrades:
md OILY NJ
room. He's going to holler, and he'll need all the
air he can get fell off the chute into that
spring once myself
You see how broad experience in this life
enables us TO put ourselves more thoroughly in
our neighbors place. and deepens and intensifes
our sympathieS
The next moment my gloomy forebodings
were realized. The nice boy 5shollered" A
wild, free howl, that spread its sweeping pinions
on the blast and went booming over the waste of
waters like thing of life, and wakened a thou
sand discordant echoes in the distant hills be-
yond the startled lake. And the half-clad boys
on the pebbly shore danced like wild cannibals in
their savage gee, and shrieked in hooking echo
OF the nice boys howl, and cast sand upon each
others redribbed backs to show their JOY.
And when that boy foundered and huttered
and gasping In the life giving rays
Of the July sun, we lay down on the ground and
held our aching sides with penitent hands, and
only asked the one poor boon, that the ice house
might fall over on top of us right then and there
Only one boy who had enjoyed himself moro
than the others. asked that some kind person
would amputate his limbs, or, as he rudely ex-
pressed himself in song, Saw my leg of.
Then we rubbed the cold boy with dry sand
until we got him nice and warm and red and
real tender, and he became good boy and went
with us often and learned many things, and we
evidently taught him to say '.swimmin hole"
But to the end of his days his provincial accent
chung to him, and he spelled rat, ''ah at, rr-r-
rat and called a war horse a wah hoss.n