St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1884-10-04
The Swimmin' Place

n
I mesn swimming place" 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, swum-
swunl in it q thousand times, and you
never saw the place don't suppose.
There was one boy, come to think of it,
who called it swimming place. He
came from Vermont; his uncle was a
Judge, or Governor, or shoemaker or
something of that kind. He said awf-
tahnoon and grawss and he called a
burr buh. He came up to Charley
Elt1np's with us one ''awftahnoon' and
said it was a charming swimming place,
and asked Bud Peters if the "watah
was Wah1n." 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. chute?-
and jumped in.
There were two things that com
blned, as Bud Peters had truly said, to
make the water cooler for all, and nicer
for some purposes, right by the big flat
rock. One was a living spring OF clear,
cold water that came gushing up out OF
the deep, cold, sunless caVerns OF the
earth right there. The other was the
rock was also the terminal point of
drain from the big ice-houses, and the
water from the melted ice, whenever it
&c
iimpid currents of the spring, and thus
developed latent heat that couldn't
have been much latenter in an iceberg.
AS l remarked, right here the boy who
called it a swimming place jumped in.
Now, if boy feels to say that be
would like to hollcr, | am the one to
get up every time and move the unani-
nous consent of the house that he may
boiler with q free course, and no re-
straint or embarrassment. So, when
this boy, after jumping into about five
feet of ice-water, gave one horritied
gasp that was enough to curdle 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 extended, high up in
the air, knew that he was seized with
a strange, morbid desire to make a lutte
noise, SO said to nv comrades:
Fellows, stand back and give him
plenty of room. He's going to boiler,
and he'll need all the air he can get. l
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 neighbours
place, and deepens and intensities our
sympathies.
The next moment my gloomy fore
Qodings were realized. The nice boy
''hollered 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
n thousand discordant echoes in the
distant hills beyond the startled lake.
And the Eaf-clad boys on the pebbly
shore danced like wild cannibals in
their savage glee, and shrieked in
knocking echo of the nice boys howl,
and cast sand upon each others red
ribbed backs to show their Joy. And
when that boy f1oundered and fluttered
ashore, and stood there shivering 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 more
than the others, asked that some kind
person would amputate his limbs, or,
as he rudely expressed himself in song:
"Saw my leg off" 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 eventually taught him to say swim
min hole" But to the end of his days his
provincial accent chung to him, and he
spelled rat, ''ah at. r-r-r-rat," and
called war-horse q -hcss.-R. j.
Burdette, IN Burlington HaWkege.
mr. T1oo,F Auoc+;or