The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1907-10-10
WAS. IT Fate?
A Romance of Roller
Skating.

If the bicycling fever doubled the
price of wedding rings, what is the
roller-skating craze going to do!
What brought about Runners wedding
or Shyly's or Sour's or little VIII
lows? Roller skating.
Willow loved Vera. My, how he did
love that girl! He idolized, worship
ed. adored her until it was almost
funny. Not to Willow, but to others.
Vera and paradise; no Vera, the other
thing. That was how he felt about
it, though otherwise he seemed per-
fectly rational.
With Willow the one question OF
the hour and all hours was how to
marry and eat three meals a day on
$15 week. He passed hours gazing
in at grocers' windows reading prices,
though Vera had told him time and
time again that she would manage
it all right.
Vera was the slave of a grabbed old
uncle, her only relative, who needed
lots of waiting on and some one to
abuse. Vera cost him less than
three dollars week and never talked
back. Vera talk back to uncle, Her
amateur performance would have
made a fine showing beside uncle
professional nagging, he having been
born with a gift for that sort of thing.
Whenever Vera had a beau uncle
had a convulsion. Willow was pretty
busy most of the time, covering his
tracks, as he knew that excitement
was bad for uncle. They managed
things rather nicely so that uncles
weak heart would get no jolts. Then
the roller-rink fever broke out.
Willow, clever ice skater, had
very little to learn. But Vera! Hon
est, it looked as if she just never
would learn. Willow presented her
with a pair of skates, and she began
home practice, guided by willows in
structions, and some printed rules. 1t
was easy enough. In fact, there was
very little to it. See that the skates
are fastened securely, stand firmly, ad-
vance right foot, throw full weight
uIOH II, btuu wen ipI wa "a W o.
send and glide away" 1t sounded
easy, but it did not seem to work
In practice.
Vera never glided Instead she
would wave and wobble frantically
here and there and then zigzag help
lessly to the exact place she did not
want to go. There invariably was
nothing to grab, so down she would
go with such force that everything
in the room would jump, her skates
always striking last. But she perse-
vered.
At last there came a time when she
consented to attend a masked carnival
at the roller rink. They wore hired
cheesecloth costumes In dinky
peasant dress Vera surely looked all
right to Willow.
She was considerable of a girl to
begin with trimming with energy. Be
fore she knew it she had torn herself
from Willows bashful and respectful
hold and was whizzing across the
mammoth rink with power enough to
carry loaded through freight four
miles uphill on a wet day. She had
lost all control OF herself and that
disbolical momentum increased with
every second.
At the opposite end OF the rink,
luhing up out Of the distance and the
disturbance he was causing, careened
a huge, red, ungainly, masked Santa
Claus, whiskers streaming, his four
eXtremities doing everything but the
right ones. Plainly the man was de-
termined to cut some particular caper
that he had set mind on if he had TO
kill everyone on the floor. Singles
and couples sprawled in his wake
some able to sit UP and send malcdiC
tons after him, while others had only
life enough to wave a skate.laden foot
in useless protest. A trolley car
would have been as sensible Of at
tack.
The rollers under Willow seemed
riveted to the floor with horror He
saw that at a point near the center Of
the rink it was foredoomed that Santa
Claus and Vera should collide with
the impulsion got from new skates
well oiled, floor that cost $4,000 to
lay and polish, a hundred and forty
pounds of uncontrolled girl and nearly
twice that weight Of man resoIutely
sending himself in the direction he
was determined to go.
As in a dream, Willow heard an
attendant say: Pal. you shouldn't of
showed your lady out that way when
old Teann and thrashin machine is
operatin' hissclf. We don't dare say
word, for he is one of the main
ropes here and can order us out of
our jobs any time he likes. Gee 1t
looks like We was goin' TO need IA
doctor or hearse or somethiu'."
They struck with a frghtful impact