The dew-bath.
Small-boned and fleshy persons naturally make the best swimmers, but it must not be supposed that thin people cannot learn to swim, and swim well. The writer well remembers seeing one morning at Brill’s swimming baths, Brighton, a young fellow who had just stepped from his dressing-box ready for a plunge. He was standing where the water is deepest, and judging by his appearance he literally could not have had an ounce of flesh to spare. It was absurd to suppose that so thin a man could swim, and his movements were curiously watched. After hesitating an instant, apparently measuring the size of the bath, he shot into the water head first as if propelled from a catapult, and shortly reappeared half-way across the bath, having swum the distance under water; he proved himself a thorough master of the element. It appeared that although passionately fond of the water he could only keep himself afloat by constant muscular exertion of both arms and legs; he was too thin to float naturally, and could not venture to swim out a greater distance than he felt sure of covering on his return.
Tuition in swimming has been for some time past, and is now, given gratuitously in town by the London Swimming Club, from the persevering and enthusiastic Honorary Secretary of which—Mr. J. Garrett Elliott, 14, Finsbury Square—particulars may be obtained.
NOTES.
Bathing after hard exercise must be indulged in judiciously: a bath after a day’s shooting or cricketing, or an afternoon at lawn-tennis—to an enthusiast, who really plays, by far the hardest and most tiring form of amusement of the three—is pleasant and invigorating, and better understood than when it was an article of faith that to plunge into cold water, when heated, was almost equivalent to committing suicide.
Our grandmothers who adopted this view, were not like some of the present generation of girls educated at Girton and Zurich, or they might have called to mind Homer’s graphic description of the nocturnal expedition of Ulysses and Diomede to the Trojan camp, and their refreshing plunge into the sea when they returned reeking with heat and moisture from their successful raid; certainly none need fear to follow the example of such an old soldier as the cautious Ithacan.
A Midsummer Night’s dip.