NCERT Book Class 12 English (Flamingo) Prose 3 Deep Water

3 Deep Water
About the author
William Douglas (1898-1980) was born in Maine, Minnesota. After
graduating with a Bachelors of Arts in English and Economics,
he spent two years teaching high school in Yakima. However,
he got tired of this and decided to pursue a legal career. He met
Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale and became an adviser and friend
to the President. Douglas was a leading advocate of individual
rights. He retired in 1975 with a term lasting thirty-six years and
remains the longest-serving Justice in the history of the court. The
following excerpt is taken from Of Men and Mountains by William
O. Douglas. It reveals how as a young boy William Douglas nearly
drowned in a swimming pool. In this essay he talks about his
fear of water and thereafter, how he finally overcame it. Notice
how the autobiographical part of the selection is used to support
his discussion of fear.

Notice these words and expressions in the text.
Infer their meaning from the context.
 treacherous  misadventure
 subdued my pride  bob to the surface like a cork
 flailed at the surface  curtain of life fell
 fishing for landlocked salmon  back and forth across the pool

It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had decided
to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A. in Yakima that
offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima River was treacherous.
Mother continually warned against it, and kept fresh in my mind
the details of each drowning in the river. But the Y.M.C.A. pool
was safe. It was only two or three feet deep at the shallow end; and
while it was nine feet deep at the other, the drop was gradual. I got
a pair of water wings and went to the pool. I hated to walk naked
into it and show my skinny legs. But I subdued my pride and did it.
From the beginning, however, I had an aversion to the water
when I was in it. This started when I was three or four years old and

Chap 3.indd 23 12/11/2024 11:19:10 AM