CURLING 285 



innocent enjoyment ; in the second, it does more to 

 blend classes, to promote kindly feeling between 

 superiors and dependents, than any amount of philan- 

 thropic speeches or any number of discourses on 

 charity. Regarded in that view, the curling-pond 

 is the English hunting-field popularised and thrown 

 open to every one, without any of the heartburnings 

 coming of trampled wheat, broken fences, vanished 

 pheasants and fowls, and trapped foxes. 



A stranger visiting Scotland with preconceived con- 

 ceptions of the austerity of the national character would 

 be strangely staggered in them in coming upon a jovial 

 "rink" of curlers. Very justly do its admirers affec- 

 tionately christen it " the roaring game." In Scotland 

 every sheet of water lies, of course, in hilly ground, and 

 he must hear the players long before he sees them. 

 All lusty men in the prime and vigour of life for 

 even the old and the ailing are regenerated and re- 

 juvenated for the day they turn out prepared to be 

 uproarious. With the air so calm and crisp that a 

 child's whisper might be heard a mile away, and while 

 the faintest crack of the ice rings like a pistol-shot, it 

 is de rigueur to bellow. The " skip," or captain, who 

 stands by the mark to issue his orders to the men only 

 some forty yards removed from him, bawls as if he 

 were shouting for a life-line from the deck of a vessel 

 in the breakers. Nor is silent obedience the order of 

 the day in the ranks, and the players hail back to him 

 in equally stentorian tones. Every man is equipped 

 with a voluminous broom to sweep the path should the 



