The morning times., 1896-11-26
THEIR SKATES ON AGAIN
Crowds Welcome the Return of
Ice Palace Pleasures.
OPENING A BRILLIANT ONE
Six Hundred or More Persons
Skinned the smooth Floor and
Hundreds Looked On-Short skirts
and Knickerbockers Had the Call
and Were Much in Evidence.

The skating carnival began last night
at Convention Hall.
1t was happy, rollicking, humping.
falling, gliding, sliding, big crowd that
opened it. There was no program There
were no formalitics. The doors were
opened at 7:30 and at that hour half a
score of skaters were standing on the side
walk waiting for that very thing AS
they walked in the band began to play
The half score put on their skates just
they would have done had they gone to
the basin back OF the Monument and began
to skim over the ice.
BY $3.50 O'Clock there were between
500 and 600 skaters on the ice and fully
as many people about the lobbies and IN
the spectators chairs.
Though the weather was mild and
pleasant outside 1T was friGid within.
Those who skated were all right, but those
who sat and watched found it necessary TO
button their coats tightly and shivcr
in time to the music, 1t was the slhverins
public, however, that saw the most or
the show They could afford 10 shivcr.
A BLAZE OF ELECTRICITY.
From the dozen great steel arches that
support the roof thousand red, white,
and blue electric bulbs glittered. They
were beautiful. Every here and there an
arc light shown out among the incan-
descent colors like planet III q constella-
tion OF fixed stars. They furnished the
light.
The orchestra was stationed over the
entrance way, just where it was last year
When it had played one piece it played
another as soon as the musicians could
get their breath and turn their music.
There was an Orchcstrion at the other
end of tie hail, where the ice cave was
last year, and tonight and in the future
nights it Will play while the orchestra
rests.
There was much society in the long
rows of chairs There was some society
on the ice. There was a spacious and
elegantly appointed parlor beside .he man
ayers office, where the spectators ran
to get warm when they thought they
could be spared from the rinkside. The
skaters did not need 10 60 there. They
grew warm as they skated, and they sat
down in the long row Of chairs around
the rink to shed the perspiration for a
While and then join the gliding throng
again.
KNEE PANTS THE VOGUE.
So much for the surroundings. But there
We're innovations on the ice. Most of the
ice palace instructors Wore blue knicker-
bockers with their blue coats. Last year
every pair of trousers on every pair of legs
OF every instructor came To- the heel of the
shoe. In one ofthc ante-rooms down stairs
there Were half a hundred bicycles. on
the ice at least ono-fourth OF the male
skaters we're in bicycle costume.
The female skaters almost to an in
dividual Wore abbreviated skirts A few
of the skirts reached to the ankle: more
missed them by four or five inches. From
that they ran up in varying numbers almost
to the knees.
The majority of the skaters took to the
ice as though there had not been a vaca-
ton OF several months. during which time
one would as soon thought OF donmng
skates as he would of tanning a zebra
They struked bac K and forth and skinned
from one end OF the long rink to the other
and ra II into each other and backed off AMI
begged pardon and sat down-on the ice
ana did "a hundred things that are always
done a skating carnivals.
AT no time was any spectator able to
count more than a dozen Piled in a heap
On me ice Tnen IL looked like Football.
But the under ones would always manage
TO wrgsle out first and let the others
down until all had come in contact with
the ice, so that ii would seem like real
falling. and the whole pile would be off
to laugh at some other crowd of CnfortC-
mates who had landed in exactly the same
condition.