If anyone in your party, when you are out boating or swimming, should be nearly drowned, the best way to revive him is to lay him, as quickly as possible, flat on his face on level ground, just turning his head a little to one side so that his nose and mouth will not be blocked. Then, kneeling astride of his legs, put both your hands on the small of his back and press downward with all your weight while you count three. This squeezes the abdomen and the lower part of the chest so as to drive the air out of the lungs. Then swing backward so as to take the weight off your hands, while you count three again; and then swing forward again and press down, again forcing the air out of the lungs. Keep up this swing-pumping about ten or fifteen times a minute for at least ten or fifteen minutes, unless the person begins to breathe of himself before this. Don’t waste any time trying to hold him up by the feet, or roll him over a barrel so as to get the water out of his lungs. Just turn him over on his face as quickly as possible and get to work making a weight-pump of yourself on his back.
If there is any life left in the body at all when it is taken out of the water, you will succeed in saving it. It is very seldom, however, that anyone who has been under water more than five minutes can be revived.
And now the thing that I want you to be sure to remember, I have saved for the last. No matter what kind of accident happens, keep your wits about you and keep cool. Be calm and think what it is best to do, instead of letting yourself be frightened. Of course, get some one to help you as soon as you can and, if need be, call for help as loud as your lungs will let you. But use that wonderful “phone” system to send in and out the messages that will help you to help yourself by telling your muscles what to do.
III. THE CITY BEAUTIFUL
One morning I stopped a moment on the street to speak to a friend. Her little nephew had just finished eating some candy, and down went his candy-bag on the pavement. His aunt happened to see it. “Oh, no, Claude,” she said, “don’t you see the big green can there? Better put it into that.” But Claude was only three years old; and the can was so tall that he could not tell what it was, till we led him up to it.
Do you have cans like these in your town, too? It is good to think that every one of us, even such little fellows as Claude, can help to keep the city beautiful. But it is not simply to make things look nice that we have so many cans—cans for ashes, cans for papers, cans for food scraps. No indeed, it is to keep the city clean and make it fit for people to live in; for if dirty papers and scraps were left to blow about the streets, they would fill the air with germs and filth.
Any dust that blows about the streets is likely to be carrying disease germs with it. That is why we have sprinklers driven through the streets to wet them and to keep down the dust; and why, in large cities, the streets are thoroughly flooded at night. If the streets are kept damp and clean, then the air above them is cool and fresh and pure.
How does the city get rid of all the dirt and waste? From every house there are two kinds of waste. Some is taken away in pipes from the sink and bathroom out into pipes that run under the street, and these carry it away from the city to some stream or deep water that takes it entirely away from the town.
The waste stuffs that are not watery, but solid—cabbage leaves, apple cores, potato parings, and other scraps from the kitchen are carted away and burned or fed to pigs. The ashes and tin cans are carted away, also, and used in making new land or filling up hollow places.
Besides taking away the dirt, cities are careful to get clear, pure drinking water. They are very, very careful about this; and they usually have the water tested often, because, as you have learned, even water that looks perfectly pure may give people typhoid fever. That is why, when you are out in the country, on a picnic perhaps, you must not drink from the streams. They may receive the drainage from a farmer’s barnyard, or the sewage from some house.