You know quite a number among the spectators. High up in yonder
pavilion, erected upon the border of the ice, are some persons whom
you have seen very lately. In the centre is Madame Van Gleck. It is
her birthday, you remember; she has the post of honor. There is
Mynheer Van Gleck, whose meerschaum has not really grown fast to his
lips; it only appears so. There are Grandfather and Grandmother, whom
you met at the St. Nicholas fete. All the children are with them. It
is so mild, they have brought even the baby. The poor little creature
is swaddled very much after the manner of an Egyptian mummy; but it
can crow with delight, and when the band is playing, open and shut its
animated mittens in perfect time to the music.

Grandfather, with his pipe and spectacles and fur cap, makes quite a
picture as he holds Baby upon his knee. Perched high upon their
canopied platforms, the party can see all that is going on. No wonder
the ladies look complacently at the glassy ice; with a stove for a
footstool, one might sit cosily beside the North Pole.

There is a gentleman with them, who somewhat resembles St. Nicholas as
he appeared to the young Van Glecks on the fifth of December. But the
Saint had a flowing white beard, and this face is as smooth as a
pippin. His Saintship was larger round the body too, and (between
ourselves) he had a pair of thimbles in his mouth, which this
gentleman certainly has not. It cannot be St. Nicholas, after all.

Near by in the next pavilion sit the Van Holps, with their son and
daughter (the Van Gends) from The Hague. Peter's sister is not one to
forget her promises. She has brought bouquets of exquisite hot-house
flowers for the winners.

These pavilions,--and there are others beside,--have all been erected
since daylight. That semicircular one, containing Mynheer Korbes's
family, is very pretty, and proves that the Hollanders are quite
skilled at tentmaking; but I like the Van Glecks' best,--the centre
one, striped red and white, and hung with evergreens.

The one with the blue flags contains the musicians. Those pagoda-like
affairs, decked with sea-shells and streamers of every possible hue,
are the judges' stands; and those columns and flagstaffs upon the ice
mark the limit of the race-course. The two white columns twined with
green, connected at the top by that long floating strip of drapery,
form the starting point. Those flagstaffs, half a mile off, stand at
each end of the boundary lin