idal chambers, and enlarging their spittoon
accommodations alow and aloft, for next summer. All the population was out
on the ice, skating, sliding, sledding, slipping, tumbling, to its heart's
content.

One person out of every Dunderbunk family was of course at home, roasting
Christmas turkey. The rest were already at high jinks on Zero's Christmas
present, when Wade and the men came down, from the meeting.

Wade buckled on his new skates in a jiffy. He stamped to settle himself,
and then flung off half a dozen circles on the right leg, half a dozen
with the left, and the same with either leg backwards.

The ice, traced with these white peripheries, showed like a blackboard
where a school has been chalking diagrams of Euclid, to point at with the
"slow unyielding finger" of demonstration.

"Hurrah!" cries Wade, halting in front of the men, who, some on the
Foundry wharf, some on the deck of our first acquaintance at Dunderbunk,
the tug "L Ambuster," were putting on their skates or watching him,
"Hurrah! the skates are perfection! Are you ready, Bill?"

"Yes," says Tarbox, whizzing off rings, as exact as Giotto's autograph.

"Now, then," Wade said, "we'll give Dunderbunk a laugh, as we practised
last night."

They got under full headway, Wade backwards, Bill forwards, holding hands.
When they were near enough to the merry throng out in the stream, both
dropped into a sitting posture, with the left knee bent, and each with his
right leg stretched out parallel to the ice and fitting compactly by the
other man's leg. In this queer figure they rushed through the laughing
crowd.

Then all Dunderbunk formed a ring, agog for a grand show of

SKATING AS A FINE ART.

The world loves to see Great Artists, and expects them to do their duty.

It is hard to treat of this Fine Art by the Art of Fine Writing. Its
eloquent motions must be seen.

To skate Fine Art, you must have a Body and a Soul, each of the First
Order; otherwise you will never get out of coarse art and skating in one
syllable. So much for yourself, the motive power. And your
machinery,--your smooth-bottomed rockers, the same shape stem and
stern,--this must be as perfect as the man it moves, and who moves it.

Now suppose you wish to skate so that the critics will say, "See! this
athlete docs his work as Church paints, as Darley draws, as Palmer
chisels, as Wittier strikes the lyre, and Longfellow the dulcimer; he is
as terse as Emerson, as clever as H