or, hilaritas, atque delectatio,
Qui quaerit alia his, malum videtur quaerere.
--Plautus: In Pseudolo.

Where sport, mirth, wine, joy, grace, conspire to please,
He seeks but ill who seeks aught else than these.

The frost continued. The lake was covered over with solid ice. This
became the chief scene of afternoon amusement, and Lord Curryfin carried
off the honours of the skating. In the dead of the night there came
across his memory a ridiculous stave:

There's Mr. Tait, he cuts an eight,
He cannot cut a nine:

and he determined on trying if he could not out-do Mr. Tait.

[Illustration: Trying if he could not out-do Mr. Tait 187-157]

He thought it would be best to try his experiment without witnesses: and
having more than an hour's daylight before breakfast, he devoted that
portion of the morning to his purpose. But cutting a nine by itself
baffled his skill, and treated him to two or three tumbles, which,
however, did not abate his ardour. At length he bethought him of cutting
a nine between two eights, and by shifting his feet rapidly at the
points of difficulty, striking in and out of the nine to and from
the eights on each side. In this he succeeded, and exhibiting his
achievement in the afternoon, adorned the surface of the ice with
successions of 898, till they amounted to as many sextillions, with
their homogeneous sequences. He then enclosed the line with an oval, and
returned to the bank through an admiring circle, who, if they had been
as numerous as the spectators to the Olympic games, would have greeted
him with as loud shouts of triumph as saluted Epharmostus of Opus.{1}

Among the spectators on the bank were Miss Niphet and Mr. MacBorrowdale,
standing side by side. While Lord Curryfin was cutting his sextillions,
Mr. MacBorrowdale said: 'There is a young gentleman who is capable of
anything, and who would shine in any pursuit, if he would keep to it.
He shines as it is, in almost everything he takes in hand in private
society: there is genius even in his failures, as in the case of the
theatrical vases; but the world is a field of strong competition, and
affords eminence to few in any sphere of exertion, and to those few
rarely but in one.'

_Miss Niphet._ Before I knew him, I never heard of him but as a lecturer
on Fish; and to that he seems to limit his public ambition. In private
life, his chief aim seems to be that of pleasing his company.