SKATING. 295 



jingling bells, may be seen trotting along merrily, side by 

 side with skaters and ice-boats. 



Canada is par excellence the country for the skater. 

 Every Canadian can skate more or less. The rink is the 

 great winter amusement, and is to be found in every 

 Canadian city. In these enormous wooden tents, well- 

 lighted by day and by night, and fitted with every conve- 

 nience for the skater, the bands play and the young people 

 meet to skate, to dance (on skates), to gossip, and amuse 

 themselves. I am credibly informed that even a little flirt- 

 ation can be managed on skates. Happy the possessor of a 

 good foot and ankle, and a neat figure ; these, for the time, 

 almost throw the pretty faces into the shade. Though, on 

 the other hand, where does the pretty face look prettier, or 

 the rosy cheeks more rosy, than on the rink ? Many of 

 the girls are good and graceful skaters. The boy of the 

 country is addicted to hockey, and is, I am compelled to 

 admit, a nuisance to the non-hockey-playing skating 

 public ; happily, he is excluded from the rink. His chief 

 victim on the open is the timid, elderly skater, or the 

 beginner ; such a one, on glare ice, surrounded by his tor- 

 mentors, is indeed a pitiable object. I see him now. 

 He has, in an unlucky moment, shuffled into the centre of 

 the hockey strife, or, more probably, the strife has, with 

 lightning-like rapidity, closed around him ; and there he 

 stands, or rather wobbles, despair depicted on his counte- 

 nance, beating the air with his hands, his body bent to an 

 angle of forty-five degrees with the ice, with no power in 

 his legs nor bone in his ankles, whilst his tormentors swoop 

 and dart around him like so many martins round a sparrow- 

 hawk. 



