SAINTS, AND THEIR BODIES 25 
tion. The novel element, the free action, the 
abated drapery, give a sense of personal con- 
tact with Nature which nothing else so fully 
bestows. No later triumph of existence is so 
fascinating, perhaps, as that in which the boy 
first wins his panting way across the deep gulf 
that severs one green bank from another, ten 
yards, perhaps, and feels himself thenceforward 
lord of the watery world. The Athenian phrase 
for a man who knew nothing was that he could 
“neither read nor swim.” Yet there is a vast 
amount of this ignorance ; the majority of sail- 
ors, it is said, cannot swim a stroke; and in a 
late lake disaster, many able-bodied men per- 
ished by drowning, in calm water, only half a 
mile from shore. At our watering-places it is 
rare to see a swimmer venture out more than a 
rod or two, though this proceeds partly from 
the fear of sharks, —as if sharks of the danger- 
ous order were not far more afraid of the rocks 
than the swimmers of being eaten. But the 
fact of the timidity is unquestionable; and I 
was told by a certain clerical frequenter of a 
watering-place, himself an athlete, that he had 
never met but two companions who would swim 
boldly out with him, both being ministers, and 
one a distinguished ex-president of Brown Uni- 
versity. This fact must certainly be placed to 
the credit of the bodies of our saints. 
