of the two, and furnishes just what the dancing-school
omits. Unfortunately, the element of water is not quite a universal
possession, and no one can train Naiads on dry land.

One of the merits of boating is that it suggests indirectly the
attendant accomplishment of swimming, and this is some thing of
such priceless importance that no trouble can be too great for its
acquisition. Parents are uneasy until their children are vaccinated, and
yet leave them to incur a risk as great and almost as easily averted.
The barbarian mother, who, lowering her baby into the water by her
girdle, teaches it to swim ere it can walk, is before us in this duty.
Swimming, moreover, is not one of those arts in which a little learning
is a dangerous thing; on the contrary, a little may be as useful in
an emergency as a great deal, if it gives those few moments of
self-possession amid danger which will commonly keep a person from
drowning until assistance comes. Women are naturally as well fitted for
swimming as men, since specific buoyancy is here more than a match
for strength; but effort is often needed to secure for them those
opportunities of instruction and practice which the unrestrained
wanderings of boys secure for them so easily. For this purpose,
swimming-schools for ladies are now established in many places, at home
and abroad; and the newspapers have lately chronicled a swimming-match
at a girls' school in Berlin, where thirty-three competitors were
entered for the prize,--and another among titled ladies in Paris, where
each fashionable swimmer was allowed the use of the left hand only, the
right hand sustaining an open parasol. Our own waters have, it may be,
exhibited spectacles as graceful, though less known to fame. Never may I
forget the bevy of bright maidens who under my pilotage buffeted on many
a summer's day the surges of Cape Ann, learning a wholly new delight in
trusting the buoyancy of the kind old ocean and the vigor of their
own fair arms. Ah, my pupils, some of you have since been a prince's
partners in the ball-room; but in those days, among the dancing waves,
it was King Neptune who placed on you his crown.

Other out-door habits depend upon the personal tastes of the individual,
in certain directions, and are best cultivated by educating these. If a
young girl is born and bred with a love of any branch of natural history
or of horticulture, happy is she; for the mere unconscious interest of
the pursuit is an