Italian showed his teeth again—"what a pity
I did not put you on a pair of pasteboard wings,
and show you as an angel instead of a Wild
Woman. Well, I am not angry with you.
Donna è mobile. When you are tired of
England, and have lost your engagement through
too many potations (you are too fond of cognac,
my Zenobia) you will be glad enough to come
back to your Angelo, and grate the cheese for
his macaroni."

"I hope not."

"Yes you will. Till then, farewell. Take
care of the Poverina"—this was Lily, and he
patted her, not unkindly, on the shoulder—
"and keep your hands off her. England is a
good country, though the sun never shines
there, and there are laws to protect the weak.
Here, La Giustizia never interferes with you,
unless your passport is out of order."

"I shall do what I like with my own."

"Precisely. Don't ill-treat your cat, or your
dog, or whatever else is your own, then. Go,
and be happy. Don't tear your new padrone's
eyes out, if you can help it. What is his name?
II Signor Touticello—what is it ? Dio mio! what
a barbarous language it is!"

"His name is no business of yours. Tu
m'embêtes, Ventimillioni. Que cela finisse!"

And so parted. The Italian may have been
a roving vagabond, not over-scrupulous as to
morality; but he was a good-natured kind of
fellow, and, when he showed his white teeth,
looked quite amiable.

This is how Lily came back to England, and
became acquainted with Ranelagh. She had
become the attendant, the dresser, the drudge,
the slave—call it what you will—of Madame
Ernestine, the lady who was creating so great
a sensation in the high school of horsemanship.

                    CAN YOU SWIM?

No. Why not? You never learned.

But dogs and cats have no need of learning.
Throw a young dog into the river, for the first
time in his life, and he will swim out again at
once, as a matter of course. Throw a young
gentleman into the same river, under similar
circumstances, and the chances are, ten to one,
that he will struggle, get choked with water, and
drown. Should he, by good luck, not choke or
drown, he will probably remain stationary, or be
simply borne along by the current, making little
or no progress towards the river's bank.

Certain philosophers have adduced these facts
as proofs of man's feeble instinctiveness, and of
his physical inferiority to the brutes. But they
are no such thing; they are quite the contrary.
They simply arise from his being a biped and not
a quadruped, and from his having a large and
heavy brain. His head is heavier, in proportion
to his bulk, than that of any other animal.
They are, therefore, a proof of his superiority.
Moreover, a dog's first essay at swimming is
merely the act of walking in water; afterwards,
the experienced water-dog does really swim,
with his fore paws at least. A man walking in.
the water, would not advance, although he
might thereby keep his head above the surface,
as is practised by swimmers in the action called
"treading water."

Nor are all the lower land animals equally
gifted with swimming powers. Some are eminently
so endowed. The common snake derives
its specific name, Coluber natrix, from the ease
with which it plays the eel; swimming, however,
with its head well erect in the air. Others,
whom you would hardly expect to do so, manage
to get themselves out of difficulties. I have
seen a hen swim bravely out of a pond into
which she had fallen. The long-legged heron
swims. Woodcocks, during their migrations,
are said sometimes to rest on the surface of the
sea. The water-ouzel (whose sub-aquatic habits
nobody would suspect from merely seeing the
bird) even flies under water, using its wings to
aid its progress. It dives, because it is
determined to dive: not because it is made for
diving.

Others, again, are very bad swimmers indeed.
Some pigs cut their own throats while swimming.
A hedgehog in the water is a pitiable
sight. As he floats, his snout falls below the
surface, and it is only by repeated efforts that
he raises it for a moment to breathe. Swim as
well as he may, he soon drowns, unless the
shore be near. There are ducks and upland
geese which, although web-footed, rarely or
never condescend to swim. It might be a little
too hard on them to say they can't. They are
pointed out by Darwinites as instances of a
hereditary feature (webbed feet) surviving
modified habits.

Let us now see what swimming is. To float,
is to be sustained on the surface of a fluid by
the force of specific gravity. A solid object,
dropped into a liquid, displaces a quantity of
that liquid exactly equal to its own weight—no
more. If the size of the object be greater than
the size of an equal weight of the liquid, it is
clear that it cannot entirely enter into that
liquid—it cannot sink, that is; it floats on the
surface. The object is lighter than the liquid;
its specific gravity is less. Thus, lead floats on
mercury, iron on melted lead, the majority of
woods on water, and cork on spirits of wine.
To float is scarcely an action; inanimate objects
float. A buoy floats. A corpse floats.

To swim, is to move at will on or in a fluid.
Swimming is aided by, but is not entirely
dependent on, specific gravity. Many fishes
which have no bladders are heavier than the
water they swim in. They may almost be said
to fly in water. To swim, therefore, is the
action and effort of an animated organism. A
dead duck floats; a live duck swims.

And yet you (who are not only alive, but
also, I hope, well) cannot float until you have
learned to swim. Floating is one of the most
practically useful details of the art of swimming.
You would float, when you fall into water, if
you could only imitate the inaction and