Year: 1869

luy.


---------<-<-


Beauty on Skates.


I OF course, we mean the ladies. They
need not, however, read the following
from the New York Bound Table. which
was evidently prepared only for gen tie.
men: *s
7 "a pretty girl on skates, If any girl
on skates can be otherwise than pretty
clad in one of those jaunty. fur-trimmed
peiisses that Cupid himself must have
fashioned, the little form bending to
and fro in undulous and rythmic mo-
ton, the glowing cheek and radiant
eyes kissed by kindly winter into ten
fold beauty, is such a sight as the holiest
and hardest Of anchorites might be par
doned for falling in love with. And If
she be, on the contrary, q poor skater,
the charm is, if anything. heightened,
at least to her cavalier. There is such
an irresistible fascination in her abso-
lutte dependence on his protecting arm;
there is such charm in her pretty ter
rors, her delicious helplessness, her
graceful tumbles; such a music in her
little shrieks of dread and her self accus-
ing laughter; and then it is so delightful
to pick her up after each comical upset.
and she is throughout 50 good natured,
and SO grateful, and so provokingly
pretty, that she Is if anything more
adorable than if she skated like a cham
pioness. An ice pond, too, on a bright,
still night, with the moon and stars all
in their places to smile encouraging
approval, is no bad place to make love
in. When the most adored of her sex
asks you, for example, as you go gliding
like the wind over the CLASSY surface,
'ifthis isn't heavenly and says she
could 20 on so forever, what is easier or
more natural than to press little tighter
the tiny hand that nestles in your own,
and suggest that 1t is heavenly, and
that it will be her fault if you don't go
Oh forever. Or, II she be one of the
tumbling kind, she is quite as likely to
observe, when you pick her up-not too
quickly-for the fifteenth time, that you
are Il dear, sweet love, and what can she
ever do to repay you, whereupon you
have only to murmur in her blushing
ear that she can be yours, and the thing
is settled at once. Then there is all
that business of lacing and unlacing
skates, and buttoning and unbuttoning
of tippets, and Il thousand other delights
that only the initiated know: and, last
of all, the brisk walk home (no sensible
skater ever rides under the mild bcne-
diction of the starlight. If there be
any of our readers whose memory does
not hold a better picture of this winter
joyance than any words can give, he or
she has our cOmmiseration and our
counsel to be wiser hereafter.


Widow is one of the very few words
if indeed there is another, of which the
feminine form is the original; tor owing
to the traits, functions. and relations Of
the sexes, among no people would pc
culiar name be first given to man who
was deprived of . woman. 1t would on
ly be after the condition of widowhood
had been recognized and conventional
usages had narrowed and Strengthened
the sexual relations, that it would enter
the mind of a people to give widow its
masculine companion word. | cannot
but admit that in English this has been
clumsily done. Widow is poor, feeb-
le word in all respects, and particularly
in respects of its etymology. Widower
should mean one who makes widows
or one who has widows; and how this
word happened to receive its present
form is beyond my conjecture [Gal-
axy.