The crawl breathing, however, is so difficult that many timid lads cannot get it. For such, and in general for little girls, there is a modified form of the side stroke. The little swimmer should learn the scissor-kick thoroughly in the bath tub. Fortunately, the scissor-kick is of all leg-strokes the one most easily learned in the tub. He should then try to swim, lying on the side and using the scissor kick ; but instead of the proper arm stroke to go with it, he may make a sort of rapid, alternate, pawing motion, with bent elbows. This movement will come almost of itself, and there need be no attempt to time arms and legs with one another. The head in this stroke will have to be twisted well over so that the face is up.
After this is learned fairly well, so that the swimmer is good for ten yards or so, the arm-stroke should be lengthened out and its rate correspondingly slowed down. This takes place somewhat gradually. When it is completed, the child is swim ming the side-stroke ; probably, however, with the wrong timing, since the natural impulse is to make the legs go with the upper arm. Later, when the child is older, this fault will have to be corrected.
Between these two methods, the choice must depend largely on the child's tem perament, chiefly upon how much it dis likes to put its head under water. Either
answers for children almost, but not quite, old enough to learn as an adult learns.
For very small children, however, nei ther method answers at all well. The first is too difficult; the second breaks down because a really little child, no matter how carefully he is taught the scissor kick, as soon as he finds himself in the water, reverts to the creeping motions of babyhood, and flops his arms and legs alternately.
He can, nevertheless, be taught to swim on the basis of his instincts, by means of a nondescript sort of stroke; a mixture of side-stroke, crawl, and the old " dog-paddle " stroke, which most self taught boys learn first by nature. This may be described as crawl behind, dog paddle in front, with the body on the side, and the head twisted into the float ing position. It is, in short, a combina tion of the first and second methods, outlined above. It should be swum during one season only, and in the next changed in one direction into the side stroke, or in the other into the crawl.
Naturally, none of these three strokes is ever likely to become popular for dis tance racing. They can, nevertheless, be learned a year or two earlier than any proper stroke. And how many little chil dren, every year, are drowned almost within arm's length of safety!