at maybe he couldn't skate on them, but he
said it didn't make any difference what they were as long as they were
skates, and he would just paralyze the whole crowd. So we got a pair of
big roller skates for him, and while we were strapping them on, Pa
he looked at the skaters glide around on the smooth wax floor just as
though they were greased. Pa looked at the skates on his feet, after
they were fastened, sort of forlorn like, the way a horse thief does
when they put shackles on his legs, and I told him if he was afraid he
couldn't skate with them we would take them off, but he said he would
beat anybody there was there, or bust a suspender. Then we straightened
Pa up, and pointed him towards the middle of the room, and he said,
"leggo," and we just give him a little push to start him, and he began
to go.
"Well, by gosh, you'd a dide to have seen Pa try to stop. You
see, you can't stick in your heel and stop, like you can on ice skates,
and Pa soon found that out, and he began to turn sideways, and then he
threw his arms and walked on his heels, and he lost his hat, and his
eyes began to stick out, cause he was going right towards an iron post.
One arm caught the post and he circled around it a few times, and then
he let go and began to fall, and, sir, he kept falling all across the
room, and everybody got out of the way, except a girl, and Pa grabbed
her by the polonaise, like a drowning man grabs at straws, though there
wasn't any straws in her polonaise as I know of, but Pa just pulled her
along as though she was done up in a shawl-strap, and his feet went out
from under him and he struck on his shoulders and kept a going, with the
girl dragging along like a bundle of clothes."
[Illustration: Pa grabbed her by the polonaise p143]
"If Pa had had another pair of roller skates on his shoulders, and
castors on his ears, he couldn't have slid along any better. Pa is a
short, big man, and as he was rolling along on his back, he looked like
a sofa with castors on being pushed across a room by a girl. Finally Pa
came to the wall and had to stop, and the girl fell right across him,
with her roller skates in his neck, and she called him an old brute, and
told him if he didn't let go of her polonaise she would murder him. Just
then my chum and me got there and we amputated Pa from the girl, and
lifted him up, and told him for heaven's sake to let us take off the
skates, cause he couldn't skate any more than a cow, and P
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