Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1883 — Teaching Swimming. [ARTICLE]

Teaching Swimming.

“Our process of teaching is a simple and easy one. When the pupil presents herself and has donned her bathing suit, which consists of a sack, skirt and broad trousers, she is taken to the preparatory room and taught the proper motions of her arms and legs on a carpet. These mastered, she is taken to the bathing pool, where a strap, so padded as not to hurt her, is passed around her body, and she is placed in the water with her face down and kept afloat by a rope passed through a pulley. Here she goes through the motions of swimming, which, like her music lesson at home, are indicated by the voice of the female teacher, who counts one, two, three*in a monotone that gives the time to the motions of the limbs. The next stage is swimming with a float or life-preserver around the body. In this the action of the limbs are perfectly free, and the pupil, accompanied by the teacher, often succeeds in making a round of the bath in the second or third lesson. All her motions are closely watched, and her attention is sharply called to any false stroke or laggard movement. The motions once perfectly learned, the pupil soon gathers ponfldence in her ability to swim, and it only in a few cases that we are not able to dispense with the float at the fifth lesson and send the young lady out to swim without any other aids than those given her by by nature. Girls are taught the same stroke as boys, but I think there is an essential difference between them in the matter of using the propelling power of the lower limbs. The boy is more vigorous and more propulsive in his legs than in his arms, while with the girls the reverse is the case. Many of our lady swimmers dispense with the skirt, which somewhat retards their motions, and wear simply the sack and the trousers. I think that is the most reasonable swimming costume, for the skirt is apt to hold the water and lessen the speed of the swimmer by giving her a heavier load to carry.— lnterview with a Professor of the Art:

Thurlow Weed’s Inability to Make Speeches. I never possessed the power “to speak in public on the stage.” This defect has been the cause of frequent embarrassment and mortification, for there have been many occasions when it would have been both proper and pleasant to have been even moderately gifted with the power of speech-making. Aware of my infirmity, I of course never attempted to participate in debate; but, eta one occasion, when a bill which I reported myself from a standing committee of which I was a member was in committee of the whole, a member desired information .in regard to the object and effect of a particular section. The information desired, though proper, was very simple; and if it had been asked in a committee room, or informally, in the presence of a dozen or twenty persons, I should have given it without the slightest embarrassment. And, forgetting myself for a moment, I rose to reply. Before uttering a dozen words, however, I became confused, then stammered, finding myself utterly incapable of proceeding, ended in a regular muddle. This was my first and last attempt, either in that House or in the Assembly of 1830 when I was again a member. — Weed’s Autobiography.