ICE 55 



What a gloriously English scene it was ! The great oaks 

 and beeches, all spaced widely enough to show their 

 quality and habit, adorn the sides of the valley, the en 

 closure of the lake. The house, a model of colour and 

 comfort, if not of architecture, stands above sloping lawns 

 and grass plots already broken by a host of bulb-spears, 

 and beyond it disappear into woodland, cedars and deci 

 duous cedars and many an exotic tree that has taken on 

 an English air. By the river that feeds the lake yellow 

 osier and red dogwood have mimicked the sunset colours 

 of a frosty evening. The lake itself is merry with a scene 

 that was better known to Victorians than to the later 

 world. A group of the disciples of the dignified English 

 style in skating known to no other people cut the 

 pattern of their combined figures between two hilarious 

 games of bandy and a miscellaneous crowd of skaters in 

 all stages of the art. As the round sun sank, the delicate 

 mist caught and held the ruddy colour and touched with 

 a soft dye every branch of every tree. 



Time was in Victorian days (in 82 or 95) when 

 rivers froze as firmly as puddles ; but in so brief and 

 mild a frost as the latest, the streams are decorated with 

 an ice that has all the vices. It is mostly cat ice, opaque, 

 resting on air like the ice in a cart rut, not at all on water ; 

 but here and there, where the stream widened out, the 

 good and the bad met and even coincided. Within fifty 

 yards of a patch of open water out of which a bunch of 

 mallard and one teal were flushed, you could skate in 

 perfect safety, but hardly in perfect comfort. The water 

 of the mere was falling, the weed had come to the surface, 

 and as you struck out the ice responded with pistol shots, 

 and thereafter a quaint crackling rumour all along the 

 fringe of cat-ice. Great cracks that enabled you to see 

 the pull of the ice multiplied on all sides, without dimin- 



