Page:Frenzied Fiction.djvu/209

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.


XVI—Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life


Let me begin with a sort of parable. Many years ago, when I was on the staff of a great public school, we engaged a new swimming master.

He was the most successful man in that capacity that we had had for years.

Then one day it was discovered that he couldn’t swim.

He was standing at the edge of the swimming tank explaining the breast stroke to the boys in the water.

He lost his balance and fell in. He was drowned.

Or no, he wasn’t drowned, I remember,—he was rescued by some of the pupils whom he had taught to swim.

After he was resuscitated by the boys—it was one of the things he had taught them—the school dismissed him.

Then some of the boys who were sorry for him taught him how to swim, and he got a new job as a swimming master in another place.

197