New Britain herald., 1916-01-19

when it suddenly occurs to me, What in blazes has all this to. do with next winters overcoat or the chaAce of New London getting somewhere com mensurate to it's opportunities with in the next ten years?'
 So I'm not what you would call a whale of a little old reminiscer. I'd give more. as a matter of fact for half a spoonful of tomorrow or two drops of the day after than I would for millpond full of yesterday. Whether that's because can kid my self into looking forward with more or less star eyed optimism, whereas I seldom peek back into the past without getting my nose full of gloom, is beside the mark. The fact remains that the older I grow the less inclined I am to rake over the ashes of burnt out memories for sparks of interest.
 But when you say "roller skates" suddenly just like that-to me, you set me back 30 years with hop, skip and a jump. You kick all my theories and all my established principles out from under, me and set the old-time bug to buzzing like a band-haw in a 16-inch log.
 
 children, was one first water, high potential, A Mo-. roller skatoria1 nut in the days when there were roller skating nuts as were nuts. Let me, after the way of the late lamented Silas Wegg, drop into verse on this tenderly agitating subject:
 How dear to my heart is the old roller rink. o11!-the old roller rink of about eighty-seven, with its thun- der of rolls like the surf on the shore and the noise of the umpah as- cending to heaven. How well I re- member the old boys and girlies who wheeled round and round to the tilt of the band. the naughty instructor who picked the good lockers and taught them for hours with hand within hand; the debonair experts who waltzed and did grapevines, say ing nothing at all of the swagger Dutch roll, the varying speeds of the circling skaters that ran all the , way from a race to a stroll. mind me the clothes of that frolicsome epoch, tight trousers, low derbies, multitudinous skirts, when glimpse of a stocking was matter for scandal and respectable males could wear only white skirts; how the rink
 
 rollers precisely as though they were going to church. with, the dudes ard the dudesses getting the homage and the less rightly clad always left in the lurch. I remember the sheen of the high polished flooring. the treach- erous spot that you struck on the turn, the haze of the punice that f1oated above you and got in your throat and your nostrils to burn.
 remember the thousands and thousands of fanlets, who spent all their time and the dough in the rinks: twas a deal like the movies are now in the matter of spending for fun what might be else spent for drinks. I recall with a thrill the sensation of motion as sweet and as fine as a passage through air-ard I remember with. oh, such acute rec o1lection. how it felt to ascend and alight on your hair. An, that was the zest and the sport of the rinking, the adventurous chance that lay under it alto guess at the number and place of the bruises to come to your lot if by chance you should fall.
 l remember quite we'll the particu- lar partners I wanted to skate with but didn't quite dare, and the ones
 
 CTS, how I drew all the lemons, my chums all the fair. I remember the barrels and barrels of shekels I blew at the rink doors in those long gone days-if I had but a handful of them at this writing, they'd provide for a decade of good photoplays. And they tell me the rollers to be resur- rected, that once. more we shall list to the old churnfng roar-you can bet I'll be there to take in the scene but I'll take it in standing, just in side the door.