Year: 1877

is performing his may evolutions upon
skates, is apt to be oppressed by sense
of hopeless inferiority. The circum-
stance seems especially annoying if the
skilled performer is recognized as a
youth that has never shown ability in
anything else; perhaps one who is
always getting out of employment be-
cause of general unfitness, and who is
consequently often a burden to his
friends. Not by any means that such
ne'er-do-weils are always good skaters,
or that the best skaters belong largely
10 that class; but that such people usu-
ally have much spare time, and are con-
sequently better able than their buster
fellows 10 devote leisure and practice to
the art of skating. And so the unskil-
led observer goes of discouraged; he
knows that there are some things that,
at all events, he can do well; as for
skating, it Is not worth while to try.
There is many a man in this city who
believes that he skated tolerably well in
his youth, but is now afraid to trust his
long -untested skill upon the ice of our
public ponds. He is fearful of being
laughed at for his awkwardness by pro-
cient but beardless boys. And there-fi
fore he denies himself the health giving
pleasures of the ice and gliding steel.


To the unskilled ones, at a season
when there is more than the average
prospect of hard-frozen ponds during
the winter, few suggestions may not
come amiss. There have been very
great Improvements in skates in recent
years, and several of the most modern
patterns nearly approach perfection. 1t
is mistake to suppose, as many do,
that person who is awkward on skates
is more likely to have fall on the new
fashioned ones than on the old, deeply
gutteIed runners. In purchasing skates
it is best to buy the best. In the modern
devices the old toe strap is almost Who'll
ly unknown. a generation of boys and
girls is growing up that will never go
through the sad experience of their
elders, of having their toes pinched by
straps fastened with buckles. These
happy youths will never know the mis-
cry of the squeezed foot when ii became
needful to tighten the straps and draw
them till the buckle tongue would enter
one hole higher. They will never ex-
perience the mingled feelings with
which their fathers used to limp home
from the skating pond-the relief be-
cause the feet were no longer squeezed
by the straps, the distress that still re-
mained in the cramped and half-frozen
extremities. II perchance man of
middle years has the skates of his youth
laid aside in some dusty lumber room,
it is far better that he should leave them
there. No greater mistake could be
made than to take them now 10 askating
pond. Let him buy new skates to be
clamped to the boots or shoes which he
is accustomed to wear; and If he does
not succeed as a skater he will, while
on the ice, at least have comfortable
feet.


The fantastic performances of skating
experts are not so difficult to learn as
many people imagine. Nerve and
strength of limb are required, but
neither need be in excess. After the
skater has acquired the ordinary capac-
ity for straightforward skating, he most
needs practised knowledge of what is
called outside and inside edge. At this
stage many persons waste their time in
trying to acquire skill in skating back
ward. They would save time by first
training themselves in skating forward
alternately on the edges of their skates.
The simplest method of such practice
is what used to be called "chOpping
bark" in circle. The centrifugal force
in this movement helps the novice; he
soon learns to incline his body off the
perpendicular, with his head toward
the centre of the circle. The art of us
ing outside and inside edge for either
foot being thus acquired, there is little