Mr. Ellerthorpe, in a characteristic letter, says: 'I think no schoolmaster should regard the education of his scholars complete unless he has taught them to swim. That art is of service when everything else is useless. I once heard of a professor who was being ferried across a river by a boatman, who was no scholar. So the professor said, "Can you write, my man?" "No, Sir," said the boatman. "Then you have lost one third of your life," said the professor. "Can you read?" again asked he of the boatman. "No," replied the latter, "I can't read." "Then you have lost the half of your life," said the professor. Now came the boatman's turn. "Can you swim?" said the boatman to the professor. "No," was his reply. "Then," said the boatman, "you have lost the whole of your life, for the boat is sinking and you'll be drowned." Now, Sir, I think that if those fathers who spend so much money on the intellectual education of their children, would devote but a small portion of it to securing for them a knowledge of the art of swimming, they would confer a great blessing on those children, and also on society at large. I would have every one learn to swim females as well as males; for many of both sexes come under my notice every year who are drowned, but who, with a little skill in swimming, might have been saved. Not fewer than forty men and boys were lost from the Hull Smacks alone during the year 1866, of whom twenty per cent, might have been saved had they been able to swim.' [Sidenote: HE LEARNS TO SWIM.] Mr. Ellerthorpe was, for many years, Master of the 'Hull Swimming Club,' and also of 'The College Youth's Swimming Club,' and his whole life was a practical lesson on the value of the art of swimming. He contended that the youths of Hull ought to be taught this art, and pleaded that a sheet of water which had been waste and unproductive for twenty years should be transformed into a swimming bath. The local papers favoured the scheme, and Alderman Dennison, moved in the Town Council, that L350 should be devoted to this object, which was carried by a majority. The late Titus Salt, Esq., who had given L5,000 to the 'Sailor's Orphan Home,' said at the time, 'I think _your corporation ought to make the swimming bath_ alluded to in the enclosed paper; _do ask them_.' 'The private individual who gives his _fifty_ hundreds to a particular Institution,' to use the words of the _Hull and Eastern Counties' Herald, Oct. 10th_, 1857, 'has surely a right to express an opinion that the municipal corporation ought to grant _three_ hundreds, if by so doing the public weal would be provided. If the voice of such a man is to be disregarded, then it may truly be said that our good old town has fallen far below the exalted position it occupied when it produced its Wilberforce and its Marvel.'