tic pinnacles and ornaments can be contrived. Our
ice-palace was usually built in what I may call a free adaptation of
the Canado-Moresque style. A very necessary feature in the ice-palace
was the large stove for thawing the brass instruments of the band. A
moment's consideration will show that in the intense cold of a Canadian
winter, the moisture that accumulates in a brass instrument would
freeze solid, rendering the instrument useless. The bandsmen had always
to handle the brass with woollen gloves on, to prevent getting burnt.
How curious it is that the sensation of touching very hot or very cold
metal is identical, and that it produces the same effect on the human
skin! With thirty or more degrees of frost, great caution must be used
in handling skate-blades with bare fingers if burns are to be avoided.
The coldest day I have ever known was New Year's Day 1888, when the
thermometer at Ottawa registered 41 degrees below, or 73 degrees of
frost. The air was quite still, as it invariably is with great cold,
but every breath taken gave one a sensation of being pinched on the
nose, as the moisture in the nostrils froze together.

The weekly club-dances of the Ottawa Skating Club were a pretty sight.
They were held in a covered public rink, gay with many flags, with
garlands of artificial flowers and foliage, and blazing with sizzling
arc-lights. These people, accustomed to skates from their earliest
childhood, could dance as easily and as gracefully on them as on their
feet, whilst fur-muffled mothers sat on benches round the rink,
drinking tea and coffee as unconcernedly as though they were at a
garden-party in mid-July instead of in a temperature of zero. An
"Ottawa March" was a great institution. Couples formed up as though for
a country dance, the band struck up some rollicking tune, the leader
shouted his directions, and fifty couples whirled and twirled, and
skated backwards or forwards as he ordered, going through the most
complicated evolutions, in pairs or fours or singly, joining here,
parting there, but all in perfect time. Woe betide the leader should he
lose his head! A hundred people would get tangled up in a hideous
confusion, and there was nothing for it but to begin all over again.

It is curious that in countries like England and Prance, where from the
climatic conditions skating must be a very occasional amusement, there
is a special word for the pastime, and that in Germany and Russia,
where every