d blades turning up in front with a sharp point, or perhaps
curling over above the toe. In this case they sometimes ended in an
acorn; if this acorn was of brass, it transfigured the boy who wore that
skate; he might have been otherwise all rags and patches, but the brass
acorn made him splendid from head to foot. When you had bought your
skates, you took them to a carpenter, and stood awe-strickenly about
while he pierced the wood with strap-holes; or else you managed to bore
them through with a hot iron yourself. Then you took them to a saddler,
and got him to make straps for them; that is, if you were rich, and your
father let you have a quarter to pay for the job. If not, you put
strings through, and tied your skates on. They were always coming off,
or getting crosswise of your foot, or feeble-mindedly slumping down on
one side of the wood; but it did not matter, if you had a fire on the
ice, fed with old barrels and boards and cooper's shavings, and could
sit round it with your skates on, and talk and tell stories, between
your flights and races afar; and come whizzing back to it from the
frozen distance, and glide, with one foot lifted, almost among the
embers.

Beyond the pork-houses, and up farther towards the canal, there were
some houses under the Basin banks. They were good places for the
fever-and-ague which people had in those days without knowing it was
malaria, or suffering it to interfere much with the pleasure and
business of life; but they seemed to my boy bowers of delight,
especially one where there was a bear, chained to a weeping-willow, and
another where there was a fishpond with gold-fish in it. He expected
this bear to get loose and eat him, but that could not spoil his
pleasure in seeing the bear stand on his hind-legs and open his red
mouth, as I have seen bears do when you wound them up by a keyhole in
the side. In fact, a toy bear is very much like a real bear, and safer
to have round. The boys were always wanting to go and look at this bear,
but he was not so exciting as the daily arrival of the Dayton packet. To
my boy's young vision this craft was of such incomparable lightness and
grace as no yacht of Mr. Burgess's could rival. When she came in of a
summer evening her deck was thronged with people, and the captain stood
with his right foot on the spring-catch that held the tow-rope. The
water curled away on either side of her sharp prow, that cut its way
onward at the full rate of five m