The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1902-07-01

sashes and gauze fans and jeweled
buckles. He liked to have them down
town to sit at little tables in sparkling
candy stores and drink soda water and
eat pink and white ice cream. But es-
pecially he liked to take them to the
matinee 1t was delightful to him to
sit in the lighted theater, with the gay
music of comic opera sounding in some
familiar overture and Selma and
side in light summer silks, holding
towering leghorn hats in their laps.
In the winter he would take them
sleighing and skating. AS soon as the
ice was frozen over in the park he and
Selma and Becky would start out with
skate bags late in the afternoon after
school was over. Before they could
reach it the North pond would be COW
cred with skaters-little boys plunging
madly, young girls gracefully dipping
and whirling, men swooping and strid-
ing, swinging skirts, bright tipped hats
and caps, dark coats and jackets, dart
ing and flying under the blue winter
sky among the brown and white slopes
and the pillaring black tree trunks of
the cold park.
Fritzie Gross would wear a gaudy
purple tippet and a toboggan cap, and
from his dress and manner of beating
himself and of magnificently breasting
the gale one might have supposed the
moderate winter gayeties of Lincoln
park invested with all the condition of
Canadian or Russian seasons.
He dashed around, noisily buckling
ladies' skates and whizzing delighted,
shrieking children about the pond and
showing off, cutting figure Fights in the
Ice and skating backward with his
scarf floating in the breeze.
When Fred Einstein came to watch
sometimes, Fritzie Gross would teeter
on one foot and tell him of different
mastery scenes on the ice ponds, one
in particular of man Of astounding
meekness at Humboldt park, who
clumsily skated in q lady's way and
was told by Fritz Gross to get out
this park get out already"
Fritzie Initiated his foe replying in
a low, whining key, Certainly, sir"
"Get out of this park, tell you, and
go take few skate lessons"
One very cold winter the lake froze
as far out as the crib. People took
walks on the ice, and skaters crowded
20 the lake shore. 1t was at this time
that Selma, Becky and Uncle Fritzie.
very lively and noisy, started out one
afternoon to skate on the lake.
1t was a fine, cold day. Across the
bare, gray paths and roads of the park,
glittering with little white pockets of
snow and blue splinters of ice they
walked out to the shore, and there
their afternoon spread before them.
The sky was blue and dazzling with
streaming winter sunlight. In its I'M
fashionable heights hung and foated
snowy masses of topping cloud, and I'M
derneath the ice clad lake repeated in
the colors of its calm scope the white
and azure splendor of the heavens. Up
to the horizon the yelled waters spread
cold and vast, and north and south
they met the city's smoke hung shores
in hoary sweeping line.
A little breeze blew from the land
The air was cold as water in ones
mouth, and 1t seemed to the children
they could hardly wait to strap their
skates and be off, flying over the frozen
surface. They seized each others
hands and shouted as they darted
along the curve of the little sandy beach
Of their start and out toward where a
few other people were whizzing black
specks against the white plain. They
skated on and on. The fresh wind blow
ing behind, the stinging air in their
faces, the free scope ahead, all exhila-
rated them, and they had gone perhaps
q mile when they saw across the daz- !