ere it is said you may see a whole company waltzing like
teetotums, with the windows wide open, at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Skating is dancing in another form; both aim at flying, and skating
comes nearest to success. The triumph of this art has been so
astonishing, in the universality of its introduction among our girls
within the short space of four winters, that it is hardly necessary to
speak of it, except to deduce the hope that other out-door enjoyments,
equally within the reach of the girls, may be as easily popularized.

For any form of locomotion less winged than skating and dancing the feet
of American girls have hitherto seemed somehow unfitted by Nature. There
is every abstract reason why they should love walking, on this side of
the Atlantic: there is plenty of room for it, the continent is large;
the exercise, moreover, brightens the eye and purifies the complexion,
--so the physiologists declare: so that an English chemist classifies
red cheeks as being merely oxygen in another form, and advises young
ladies who wish for a pair to seek them where the roses get them,
out-of-doors,--upon which an impertinent damsel writes to ask "Punch"
if they might not as well carry the imitation of the roses a little
farther, and remain in their beds all the time? But it is a lamentable
fact, that walking, for the mere love of it, is a rare habit among our
young women, and rarer probably in the country than in the city; it is
uncommon to hear of one who walks habitually as much as two miles a day.
There are, of course, many exceptional instances: I know maidens who
love steep paths and mountain rains, like Wordsworth's Louisa, and I
have even heard of eight young ladies who walked from Andover to Boston,
twenty-three miles, in six hours, and of two who did forty-five miles in
two days. Moreover, with our impulsive temperaments, a special object
will always operate as a strong allurement. A confectioner's shop, for
instance. A camp somewhere in the suburbs, with dress-parades, and
available lieutenants. A new article of dress: a real ermine cape may be
counted as good for three miles a day, for the season. A dearest friend
within pedestrian distance: so that it would seem well to plant a circle
of delightful families just in the outskirts of every town, merely to
serve as magnets. Indeed, so desperate has the emergency become, that
one might take even ladies' hoops to be a secret device of Nature to
secure more exe