tforward running on the flat of
the skate with bent knees, so he had a great deal to learn; but with his
usual persistency, when he once took anything in hand he did not regard
the difficulties, and only dreaded lest he should not have sufficient
opportunity of practising. He began, of course, by endeavouring to
master the outside edge, which is the grammar of figure skating, and
watched Leblanc, but could make nothing out of that, for Leblanc seemed
to move by volition, as some birds appear to skim along without any
motion of the wings. He could not give hints, or show how anything was
done, because he could not understand where any difficulty lay. It was
like simple walking to him; you get up and walk, you could not show any
one exactly _how_ to walk.

But there were two or three other fair skaters from whom more could be
learned; Penryhn, for example, was a very decent performer of simple
figures. He came from a northern county, where there was yearly
opportunity of practice, and had been taught by his father, who was an
excellent skater.

"The first great thing you must always bear in mind," said he, "is that
the leg upon which you stand, while on the outside edge, must be kept
straight and stiff, with the knee rigidly braced. You see some fellows
there practising by crossing the legs; while they are on one leg they
bring the other in front, and across it, before they put it down on the
ice. This certainly forces you to get on to the outside edge, but it
twists the body into a wrong position--one in which the all-important
thing in skating, balance, cannot be acquired. Besides, it gets you
into a way of bringing the foot off the ground to the front, whereas it
ought always to be a little behind the one you are skating on, and it
takes as long to get out of that habit as to learn the outside edge
altogether pretty well. Why, here is Old Algebra positively with a pair
of skates on!"

"Old Algebra," as a mathematical genius, whose real name was Smith, was
called, skated very well too.

"Look here, Algebra," cried Penryhn, "I am trying to show Buller how to
do the outside edge; can't you give him a scientific wrinkle?"

"The reason why you find an initial difficulty in the matter," said
Algebra gravely, adjusting his spectacles, "is that you naturally
suppose that if you bend so far out of the perpendicular, the laws of
gravity must cause you to fall. But that is because you omit the
centrifugal force fro