192 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



home, with the ice perfection "a perfect 

 glare " and the fun at its height. This 

 was before the day of " rockers," of which 

 I had a pair later, and a proud boy I 

 was. Pretty treacherous we found them to 

 start with, or rather to stop with ; but for 

 better or worse we got the hang of their 

 peculiarities before our skulls were irrepa- 

 rably broken. 



Skating then was like whist-playing now, 

 an endless study. You thought you were 

 fairly good at it till a new boy came along 

 and showed you tricks such as you had 

 never dreamed of ; just as you thought, per- 

 haps, that you could play whist till you sat 

 opposite a man who asked, in a tone between 

 bewilderment and asperity, why on earth 

 you led him a heart at a certain critical stage, 

 or why in the name of common sense you 

 did n't know that the ten of clubs was on 

 your left. Art is long. It was true then, 

 as it is now. But what matter? We 

 skated for fun, as we did everything else 

 (out of school), except to shovel paths and 

 saw wood. Those things were work. And 

 work was longer even than art. Work was 



