Connecticut western news., 1877-02-16
Skating.

is performing his mazy evolutions upon skates, is apt to be oppressed by sense of hopeless inferiority. The circum- stance seems especially annoying if the skilled performer is recognized as 8 youth that has never shown ability in anything else; perhaps one who is always getting out of employment be- cause of general unfitness, and who is consequently often a burden to his friends. Not by any means that such ne'er-do-we1ls are always good skaters, or that the best skaters belong largely to that class; but that such people usu- ally have much spare time, and are con- sequently better able than their buster fellows to devote leisure and practice to the art of skating. And so the unskil- led observer goes off discouraged; he knows that there are some things that, at all events, he can do we'll; as for skating, it is not worth while to try. There is many man in this city who believes that he skated tolerably we'll in his youth, but is now afraid to trust his long untested skill upon the ice of our public ponds. He is fearful of being laughed at for his awkwardness by pro- cient but beardless boys. And there-ti fore he denies himself the health giving pleasures of the ice and gliding steel.
 To the unskilled ones, at season when there is more than the average prospect of hard-frozen ponds during the winter, a few suggestions may not come amiss. There have been very great improvements in skates in recent years, and several of the most modern patterns nearly approach perfection. It is mistake to suppose, as many do, that a person who is awkward on skates is more likely to have fall on the new fashioned ones than on the old, deeply gutter ed runners. In purchasing skates it is best to buy the best. In the modern devices the old toe strap Is almost who'll ly unknown. A generation of boys and girls is growing up that will never go through the sad experience of their elders, of having their toes pinched by straps fastened with buckles. These happy youths will never know the mis- cry of the squeezed foot when it became needful to tighten the straps and draw them till the buckle tongue would enter one hole higher. They will never ex- perience the mingled feelings with which their fathers used to. limp home from the skating pond-the relief be- cause the feet were no longer squeezed by the straps, the distress that still re- mained in the cramped and half-f frozen extremities. If perchance a man of middle years has the skates of his youth laid aside in some dusty lumber room, it is far better that he should leave them there. No greater mistake could be made than to take them now to askating pond. Let him buy new skates to be clamped to the boots or shoes which he is accustomed to wear; and if he does not succeed as skater he will, while on the ice, at least have comfortable feet.
 The fantastic performances of skating experts are not so difficult to learn as many people imagine. Nerve and | SIAClS LII OA 1l1uO dIS ICGuIESu1 UuL neither need be in excess. After the skater has acquired the ordinary capac- ity for straightforward skating, he most needs practised knowledge of what is called outside and inside edge. At this stage many persons waste their time in trying to acquire skill in skating back ward. They would save time by first training themselves in skating forward alternately on the edges of their skates. The simplest method of such practice is what used to be called ''chopping bark'' in circle. The centrifugal force in this movement helps the novice; he soon learns to incline his body of the perpendicular, with his head toward the centre of the circle. The art of us- ing outside and inside edge for either foot being thus acquired, there is little