104 MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON, [Chap. IV. 



acquire; but thanks to intense perseverance, wet and fine, 

 Sundays not excepted, I have so far overcome my natural 

 awkwardness that I can swim about twenty or thirty yards at a 

 time, can float a bit, and altogether have moderate confidence 

 in a ' tidy depth of water.' Our bathing party has met at half- 

 past five every morning ; and we teach one another, somewhat 

 in the German fashion, by stringing up at a turn-bridge. Of 

 course, they have fallen away since the stormy weather began ; 

 but I have never been entirely without company, except on one 

 morning. We have established a regular college, and give 

 degrees according to proficiency. To take a Doctor, it is 

 necessary to have saved some one from drowning, and taught 

 some one to swim. . . . To take a Bachelor, they must swim 

 across the broad part of the canal, turn, and come back without 

 stopping, some forty yards. All grown-up persons who can't 

 swim belong to the Awkward Squad, of whom I am president : 

 lads that are learning are simply undergraduates. . . . On the 

 first of this month we christened a new turn-bridge, by diving off 

 the rails, five feet nine inches, which was a decent plunge for a 

 squad ! Our favourite place is a mill-stream which runs down 

 a steep channel into a pond. We go in with the stream, swim 

 across the deep part, and land in the shallow. There has 

 lately been a flood, and such a stream ! We jumped in from 

 the wall, and shot off like wildfire. One of our doctors dived 

 in from the top of the w r ater-wheel. . . . On Sunday week, 

 four persons were killed through drinking in Warrington : one 

 hung himself ; the others were out in a boat — three drunken 

 men and two lads. They reeled about, capsized the boat, 

 and the two lads and one man were drowned ; the other two 

 would have been also, but that my swimming doctor plunged 

 in and saved them. I preached about it last Sunday : chapel 

 crowded : many went away." 



He kept a memorandum of his bathes from November i, 

 1847, t0 J une 5? 1848, recording the place, the weather, and 

 the temperature of the air and of the water. The mill-pond 

 and the Sankey and Old Quay Canals were his favourite resorts. 

 He had his share of rain and sleet and fog, but the winter 



