Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1885-03-21
From the Hartford Times.

| From the Hartford Times.
| 1t is evening. The rink is made brilliant By
| the light of the electric jets and by the great
| throng of lads and lassies and those Of more ma
| ture age who are not too old to enjoy the
scenes Of activity displayed by the younger
| ones.
| 1t is an exhilarating sight to see 500 skaters
| OF both sexes rolling around and around the
| large room in an irresistible whirl. Note the
| animated faces of the throng as they come
trOOping along. or course, all are moving in one
direction, and all are intent on their personal
| enjoyment, and do not take in what is going on
| among themselves. The spectators in the gal
| leries can do that and gather In the fun without
| mourning risks of any sort.
Analyze some of the features which have ex.
preston. Here comes a couple In their teens;
she with petite form and graceful movement;
he with boyish air, of "cOme-up-to-me-ifyou.
cam eaan Her face IS happy and as she glides
she is wondering how she looks, and If abe has
really succeeded in creating anything Of q sen.
The next in the procession is q Boy trying to
skate on his head and is fairly successful Next
comes a lady, just turned the first corner, and,
as she Is alone, may have sad thoughts Of get
ting left But in a moment a gay cavalier
gl1ded up to her, raised his hat, and she, too,
was moving along with a companion.
The young lady with a rosy face, queenly
lorm and pleasing movement is made to APP
pear a little awkward from the fact that her
In the art of roller skating.
Now comes two school girls, who glide along
up in each other They are waiting for some
thing; what is it? A boy is shot out of the
throng of skaters. He came out backward.
he made believe at the start that he had dis
covered a new backward figure. and he evil
IDENTIFY came to lay it at the feet of the dreamy
mfaldens, and as he landed with 1t they went
forward in haste to take it up, but OverShot the
mark and went down. They scrambled to their
feet, and with faces crimson with bushes they
sped on, and for a few minutes they were wait
Ing for no one, and seemed to have passed out
of the dreamy state.
In the procession were two girls, lovely in
form and feature, who kept their eyes moving
about uneasily. To the right, to the left, to
the front, their eyes were ceaselessly directed
body eyes we're In Of
times, one of the faces lighted up with brill
fancy, and, with nudge to her companion
here, the girl whose sharp eyes discovered
the objects of their search assumed an fndif-
ferent look and stared straight ahead at va
cancy. In a moment, when confronted by two
cavaliers, the girls each let slip EXPLANATIONS
OF surprise, as if their coming was wholly un-
expected. Oh, those naughty girls. Then
they separated-the girls-and each went off
with her "feller."
Now look at this young man. He seems to be
art of roller skating. He has conquered all the
Difficult ties of plain locomOtion, and he is look
ing at the more advanced ones as they show
some fancy figure. A man passes him in a
squattlng posture, a hand on each knee, the
toes of the skates aiming at diverse points of the
compass. The wonder is that one leg didn't
start for the north and the other for the south.
Inc ambitious young man thought that was
easy. He tried 1T, and his legs did separate at
q speed which would have dismeInbered them
II he had been six inches taller.
The next feat he attempted to emulate was to
skate backward. The fellow he picked out for
q pattern made four backward revolutions in
the space of . cheese-bOx by touching his toes
at intervals to supply the locomotion. The am
bilious young man tried to repeat it fmmedi-
ately. He made one revolution most success
fuily, and then sat down and made the balance
OF them on the floor, the rollers to his skates
pointing heavenward half the time. 1t didn't
hurt him any, and he was directly on his feet
again trying the north and south pole act, in
which the attraction of gravitatiOn once moro
caused him to assume a horizontal attitude.
Before he could pick himself up, small boy
tumbled over him, and in just ten seconds by
the rink clock good-sized heap Of animation
was on the floor struggling to regain the perpen-
dlcular The boy was the first to struggle out
of the confused mass, and seemed to Be glad
that he had got away with his life.