Or I say: "No, I can't swim; and I don't want to!"
Chorus: "Why?"
"Because it is so dangerous."
Chorus: "Why?"
The Infernally Wise Youth: "For several reasons. If you are a swimmer you are likely to be oftener near water and oftener in danger than a non-swimmer. Further, as soon as you can swim even only a little, then as an honourable man, it behoves you to plunge in at once to save a drowning person, whereas, if you couldn't swim it would be merely tempting Providence."
Isn't it sickening?
A Jolt
Yesterday the wind was taken out of my sails. Racing along with spinnaker and jib, feeling pretty fit and quite excited over some interesting ectoparasites just collected on some Tinamous, I suddenly shot into a menacing dead calm: that stiflingly still atmosphere which precedes a Typhoon. That is to say, my eye caught the title of an enormous quarto memoir in the Trans. Roy. Soc., Edinburgh: The Histology of —— ——.
I was browsing in the library at the time when this hit me like a carelessly handled gaff straight in the face. I almost ran away to my room.