MAKING A SWIMMING POOL
In a country where wooded brooks are plentiful there is absolutely no good reason why boys shouldn't have a swimming pool. It needn't cost a thousand dollars, either. Every outdoor club ought to have one as a special feature. The same dam that holds back the water for the skating pond may serve in summer to make the swimming hole. It is really fun to build a dam. Your father or the other boy's father will know how. You can dig out the stream at low water, and make the pool deep enough for diving.
High banks make the place more private; trees and underbrush serve the same purpose. But if the banks are not high naturally, and the trees have been cut away you have no idea how quickly you can make a natural screen. Willows love the margin of streams and they grow tremendously. A frame of poles covered with wild cucumber or morning glory will make a good screen the first season while the permanent trees and shrubs are growing. You don't need to swim all your spare time, so you can give some time to making the pool more secluded. Move a few big bushes from the woods in winter. They will never know the difference if you transplant them while their roots are frozen in a big ball of earth.
Let me make a suggestion to you. You believe everybody ought to know how to swim, don't you? That includes your father, of course, who taught you. Does it include your sisters and the other boys' sisters? "Everybody" is a big word, now you think of it. Why it includes even your mother! Do mothers know anything about swimming? Some of them do, already, only they never get a chance to keep in practice; but they like it. It is precisely as natural for girls and mothers to enjoy the water as it is for boys and fathers. Just be generous and let it be understood that a certain day in the week is ladies' day, and turn the pool over to them. Their bathing suits may not be in the latest fashion, but you won't be there to criticize nor to see how well they really swim.