uld remember was being on the ice there, when
a young man caught him up into his arms, and skated off with him almost
as far away as the canal. He remembered the fearful joy of the
adventure, and the pride, too; for he had somehow the notion that this
young fellow was handsome and fine, and did him an honor by his
notice--so soon does some dim notion of worldly splendor turn us into
snobs! The next thing was his own attempt at skating, when he was set
down from the bank by his brother, full of a vainglorious confidence in
his powers, and appeared instantly to strike on the top of his head.
Afterwards he learned to skate, but he did not know when, any more than
he knew just the moment of learning to read or to swim. He became
passionately fond of skating, and kept at it all day long when there was
ice for it, which was not often in those soft winters. They made a very
little ice go a long way in the Boy's Town; and began to use it for
skating as soon as there was a glazing of it on the Basin. None of them
ever got drowned there; though a boy would often start from one bank and
go flying to the other, trusting his speed to save him, while the thin
sheet sank and swayed, but never actually broke under him. Usually the
ice was not thick enough to have a fire built on it; and it must have
been on ice which was just strong enough to bear that my boy skated all
one bitter afternoon at Old River, without a fire to warm by. At first
his feet were very cold, and then they gradually felt less cold, and at
last he did not feel them at all. He thought this very nice, and he told
one of the big boys. "Why, your feet are frozen!" said the big boy, and
he dragged off my boy's skates, and the little one ran all the long mile
home, crazed with terror, and not knowing what moment his feet might
drop off there in the road. His mother plunged them in a bowl of
ice-cold water, and then rubbed them with flannel, and so thawed them
out; but that could not save him from the pain of their coming to: it
was intense, and there must have been a time afterwards when he did not
use his feet.

His skates themselves were of a sort that I am afraid boys would smile
at nowadays. When you went to get a pair of skates forty or fifty years
ago, you did not make your choice between a Barney & Berry and an Acme,
which fastened on with the turn of a screw or the twist of a clamp. You
found an assortment of big and little sizes of solid wood bodies with
guttere