Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1879 — A Swimming Excursion. [ARTICLE]

A Swimming Excursion.

There is a beautiful pellucid lake in a certain county in Tennessee, which is noted as much for leeches as for the beauty of its dear water and surrounding scenery. It was an impromptu bathing pool for all the hoys in the neighborhood, except on Sundays, wheu the\ were at church, lying about on tiie grasstdiing stories, which were occasionally iuterupted by the loud tones of the preacher. The second warm Sunday this Spring four pretty, romping girls were staying at a farm house near the lake, and when everybody started to church they allowed that they would stay home aud go bathing in the lake; which they did to their entire satisfaction. They swam, and giggled, and sploshed like mermaids ana nymphs, and sat on the bank like frogs, and then splashed and swam, and giggled some more, and calculating their time, so as to get to the house before the church goers returned, they presently crawled out of the'water to dress; but what was their consternation to discover,some dozen t or so black things attached to the snowy y forms of each one of the nymphs. They yelled with forty-girl Eower, and tried to pull the leeches off’, ut the varmints had too good taste, in more senses than one, to be pulled off. They stuck on faster the more the girls 'screamed? Their fright got the better of maidenly modesty, ami the four cut for home just as they were in Tennessee .bathing suits, which means nothing at all. It happened, however, that Ebenezer Crawford was sick that day, and services were short; so that the four Eve-like fugitives came out on the main road and met twothirds of the congregation. Their relatives did not recognize them in that slight attire of leeches, and naturally thinking it was a female lunatic asylum broken loose took after them pellmell. Away they went over brush and briar, wood and bramble, the whole congregation headed by the deacons, after the four girls. At last they ran in some haystacks and it was only then that the dilemma was discovered. The chase returned and four old ladies went out and brought the girls in.—Washington Capitol.