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III.] knew that," or " I knew that thing: viz. he was ill;" "we saw the man who did it " represents "who did it? we saw the man," or "we saw the man [of whom the inquiry is made] who did it?" Than is historically the same word as then: "he is mightier than I" was once "he is mightier, then (that is, next after him) I." Or is a contracted form of other. The primary meaning of and is 'against;' the simpler form of the latter, again, has made at least partially the same transition to a connective. Our articles are of quite modern development; an or a is the numeral one; the is the demonstrative that. We saw some time since how head has come to stand for 'individual;' the butcher talks of "twenty head of sheep," as if that part of the animal were not the least valuable from his point of view. Hand is similarly applied: "the head-carpenter and his twenty hands," if it do not describe one Briarean individual, ought at least to designate only eleven persons; but in our usage it denotes twenty-one. Even the peculiarly corporal word body has been spiritualized, in somebody, anybody, "if a body meet a body," and so on: to say "nobody was present" is equivalent to saying "not a soul was there," and would be true, however many corpses, or beasts, or bodies metallic, fluid, or aëriform, might have been within cognizance. The verb grow signifies properly 'to increase, to change from smaller to larger,' but we often use it in the simple sense of gradual change, of 'becoming,' and say to grow thin or small, to grow tired. By a farther extension of the same process, the verb which in our whole family of languages originally meant 'to grow' (Sansk. bhû, Greek phüō) has in many of them passed through the idea of 'becoming' to that of 'being' simply: the Latin fui, our be, been, are its descendants. Indeed, our substantive verb to be, the most bodiless and colourless of all our words, the mere copula between subject and predicate, is made up of the relics of several verbs which once had a distinct physical significance: be and been, as just noticed, contained the idea of 'growing;' am, art, is, and are, that of 'sitting;' was and were, that of 'dwelling, abiding.'


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116 The corresponding verb in modern French is partly filled up (être, étais, été) from the Latin stare, 'to stand.'

Not only are certain words thus stripped by the users and makers of language of the substantial meaning with which they once were invested, but phrases are also formed, of two or more words, and applied to uses widely remote from those which their constituents more generally and properly subserve. An event, we say, takes place, or comes to pass; a young man turns out ill; his foibles are tellingly hit off, or taken off; though they had seriously fallen out, they made up their quarrel, and a good understanding was brought about between them; they gave up further attempts; at every new turn, he was headed off anew; I was put up to it, but woefully put upon, and shall put up with such treatment no longer; don't take on so, my good fellow—and so on indefinitely. Phrases such as these are abundant in every part of language, and are of every kind and degree of removal from literalness: in some, a moment's reflection points out the figure or the implication which has led the way to their establishment in current use; in others, the transfer has been so distant, and some of its steps so bold or so obscure, that even a careful investigation fails fully to show us how it has been accomplished. In phrases, as is well known, consists no small part of the idiom of a language; use determines, not merely the significance which each word shall bear, but how it shall be combined with other words, in order to something more than intelligibility—to expressiveness, to force, to elegance of style.

All word-making by combination, as illustrated in the last lecture, is closely analogous with phrase-making: it is but the external and formal unification of elements which usage has already made one in idea. The separate and distinctive meaning of the two words in take place is as wholly ignored by us who use the expression as is that of the two in breakfast; that we may allow ourselves to say he breakfasted, but not it takeplaced, is only an accident; it has no deeper ground than the arbitrariness of conventional usage. To hit off is as much one idea as doff (from do off), to take on as don (from do on), although we are not likely ever to fuse the

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Saxe v. State College Area School District

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA. (Dist. Court No. 99-cv-01757). District Court Judge: James F. McClure, Jr.

Judgment of the District Court reversed.

BRYAN J. BROWN (Argued), STEPHEN M. CRAMPTON, BRIAN FAHLING, MICHAEL J. DEPRIMO, AFA Center for Law and Policy, Tupelo, MS. SCOTT WILLIAMS, Williamsport, PA, Counsel for Appellants.

JOHN R. MILLER, JR., DAVID B. CONSIGLIO (Argued), Miller, Kistler, Campbell, Miller, Williams & Benson, Inc., State College, PA, Counsel for Appellees.

Before: ALITO, RENDELL, and DUHE, Circuit Judges. RENDELL, Circuit Judge, concurring.


text: Portal talk:Ancient poetry

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 The

was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.

There were other things in the stocking, nuts and oranges and a toy engine, and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.

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 For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

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Love and Skates

Contents

 * Chapter I. A Knot and a Man to Cut It
 * Chapter II. Barracks for the Hero
 * Chapter III. How to Behead a Hydra!
 * Chapter IV. A Christmas Gift
 * Chapter V. Skating as a Fine Art
 * Chapter VI. “Go Not, Happy Day, Till the Maiden Yields”
 * Chapter VII. Wade Down
 * Chapter VIII. Tête-à-Tête
 * Chapter IX. Love in the First Degree
 * Chapter X. Forebodings
 * Chapter XI. Cap’n Ambuster’s Skiff
 * Chapter XII. In the Ice

title: Love and Skates


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Portal:Poetry/Help

 * Help:Poetry

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Love and Skates/Chapter I

Consternation! Consternation in the back office of Benjamin Brummage, Esq., banker in Wall Street.
 * Chapter I. A Knot and a Man to Cut It.

Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the North River, to say, that, “unless something be done, at once, the Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must wind up.” President Brummage forthwith convoked his Directors. And here they sat around the green table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide feast.

Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy summer solstice, the longest and fairest day of all the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled from Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags a three-decker cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly sailed in upon Credit.

As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the tenth of that June all the money in America had buried itself and was as if it were not. Everybody and everything was ready to fail. If the hindmost brick went, down would go the whole file.

There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk Foundry.

Now, not seldom, of a Board of ten Directors, five are wise and five are foolish: five wise, who bag all the Company’s funds in salaries and commissions for indorsing its paper; five foolish, who get no salaries, no commissions, no dividends, — nothing, indeed, but abuse from the stock-holders, and the reputation of thieves. That is to say, five of the ten are pickpockets; the other five, pockets to be picked.

It happened that the Dunderbunk Directors were all honest and foolish but one. He, John Churm, honest and wise, was off at the West, with his Herculean shoulders at the wheels of a deadlocked railroad. These honest fellows did not wish Dunderbunk to fail for several reasons. First, it was not pleasant to lose their investment. Second, one important failure might betray Credit to Crisis with Panic at its heels, whereupon every investment would be in danger. Third, what would become of their Directorial reputations? From President Brummage down, each of these gentlemen was one of the pockets to be picked in a great many companies. Each was of the first Wall-Street fashion, invited to lend his name and take stock in every new enterprise. Any one of them might have walked down town in a long patchwork toga made of the newspaper advertisements of boards in which his name proudly figured. If Dunderbunk failed, the toga was torn, and might presently go to rags beyond repair. The first rent would inaugurate universal rupture. How to avoid this disaster? — that was the question. “State the case, Mr. Superintendent Whiffler,” said President Brummage, in his pompous manner, with its pomp a little collapsed, pro tempore.

Inefficient Whiffler whimpered out his story.

The confessions of an impotent executive are sorry stuff to read. Whiffler’s long, dismal complaint shall not be repeated. He had taken a prosperous concern, had carried on things in his own way, and now failure was inevitable. He had bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried to bully them, when they asked for their money. They had insulted him, and threatened to knock off work, unless they were paid at once. “A set of horrid ruffians,” Whiffler said, — “and his life wouldn’t be safe many days among them.”

“Withdraw, if you please, Mr. Superintendent,” President Brummage requested. “The Board will discuss measures of relief.”

The more they discussed, the more consternation. Nobody said anything to the purpose, except Mr. Sam Gwelp, his late father’s lubberly son and successor.

“Blast!” said he; “we shall have to let it slide!”

Into this assembly of imbeciles unexpectedly entered Mr. John Churm. He had set his Western railroad trains rolling, and was just returned to town. Now he was ready to put those Herculean shoulders at any other bemired and rickety no-go-cart.

Mr. Churm was not accustomed to be a Director in feeble companies. He came into Dunderbunk recently as executor of his friend Damer, a year ago bored to death by a silly wife.

Churm’s bristly aspect and incisive manner made him a sharp contrast to Brummage. The latter personage was flabby in flesh, and the oppressively civil counter-jumper style of his youth had grown naturally into a deportment of most imposing pomposity.

The Tenth Director listened to the President’s recitative of their difficulties, chorused by the Board.

“Gentlemen,” said Director Churm, “you want two things. The first is Money!”

He pronounced this cabalistic word with such magic power, that all the air seemed instantly filled with a cheerful flight of gold American eagles, each carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver dollar in its claws; and all the soil of America seemed to sprout with coin, as after a shower a meadow sprouts with the yellow buds of the dandelion.

“Money! yes, Money!” murmured the Directors.

It seemed a word of good omen, now.

“The second thing,” resumed the new-comer, “is a Man!”

The Directors looked at each other and did not see such a being.

“The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is a dunderhead,” said Churm.

“Pun!” cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a snooze.

Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started a complimentary laugh.

“Order, gentlemen! Orrderr!” said the President, severely, rapping with a paper-cutter.

“We must have a Man, not a Whiffler!” Churm continued. “And I have one in my eye.”

Everybody examined his eye.

“Would you be so good as to name him?” said Old Brummage, timidly.

He wanted to see a Man, but feared the strange creature might be dangerous.

“Richard Wade,” says Churm.

They did not know him. The name sounded forcible.

“He has been in California,” the nominator said.

A shudder ran around the green table. They seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a bison, in a red shirt, and jackboots, hung about the waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie-knives, and standing against a background of mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law.

“We must get Wade,” Churm says, with authority. “He knows Iron by heart. He can handle Men. I will back him with my blank check, to any amount, to his order.”

Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer, burst from the Directors.

Everybody knew that the Geological Bank deemed Churm’s deposits the fundamental stratum of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like underlying granite. When hot times came, they boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world.

Churm’s blank check seemed to wave in the air like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard to his knees, and his belt stuck fall of howitzers and boomerangs; he might have been repeatedly hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut down and revived by galvanism; but brandishing that check, good for anything less than a million, every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his friend, and his brother.

“Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation,” cried the Directors.

“But, gentlemen,” Churm interposed, “if I give him my blank check, he must have carte blanche, and no one to interfere in his management.”

Every Director, from President Brummage down, drew a long face at this condition.

It was one of their great privileges to potter in the Dunderbunk affairs and propose ludicrous impossibilities.

“Just as you please,” Churm continued. “I name a competent man, a gentleman and fine fellow. I back him with all the cash he wants. But he must have his own way. Now take him, or leave him!”

Such despotic talk had never been heard before in that Directors’ Room. They relucted a moment. But they thought of their togas of advertisements in danger. The blank check shook its blandishments before their eyes.

“We take him,” they said, and Richard Wade was the new Superintendent unanimously.

“He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to-morrow morning,” said Churm, and went off to notify him.

Upon this. Consternation sailed out of the hearts of Brummage and associates.

They lunched with good appetites over the green table, and the President confidently remarked, —

“I don’t believe there is going to be much of a crisis, after all.”

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Love and Skates/Chapter II

Wade packed his kit, and took the Hudson River train for Dunderbunk the same afternoon.
 * Chapter II. Barracks for the Hero

He swallowed his dust, he gasped for his fresh air, he wept over his cinders, he refused his “lozengers,” he was admired by all the pretty girls and detested by all the puny men in the train, and in good time got down at his station.

He stopped on the platform to survey the land- and water-privileges of his new abode.

“The June sunshine is unequalled,” he soliloquized, “the river is splendid, the hills are pretty, and the Highlands, north, respectable; but the village has gone to seed. Place and people look lazy, vicious, and ashamed. I suppose those chimneys are my Foundry. The smoke rises as if the furnaces were ill-fed and weak in the lungs. Nothing, I can see, looks alive, except that queer little steamboat coming in, — the ‘I. Ambuster,’ — jolly name for a boat!”

Wade left his traps at the station, and walked through the village. All the gilding of a golden sunset of June could not make it anything but commonplace. It would be forlorn on a gray day, and utterly dismal in a storm.

“I must look up a civilized house to lodge in,” thought the stranger. “I cannot possibly camp at the tavern. Its offence is rum, and smells to heaven.”

Presently our explorer found a neat, white, two-story, home-like abode on the upper street, overlooking the river.

“This promises,” he thought. “Here are roses on the porch, a piano, or at least a melodeon, by the parlor-window, and they are insured in the Mutual, as the Mutual’s plate announces. Now, if that nice-looking person in black I see setting a table in the back-room is a widow, I will camp here.”

Perry Purtett was the name on the door, and opposite the sign of an omnium-gatherum country-store hinted that Perry was deceased. The hint was a broad one. Wade read, “Ringdove, Successor to late P. Purtett.”

“It’s worth a try to get in here out of the pagan barbarism around. I’ll propose — as a lodger — to the widow.”

So said Wade, and rang the bell under the roses. A pretty, slim, delicate, fair-haired maiden answered.

“This explains the roses and the melodeon,” thought Wade, and asked, “Can I see your mother?”

Mamma came. “Mild, timid, accustomed to depend on the late Perry, and wants a friend,” Wade analyzed, while he bowed. He proposed himself as a lodger.

“I didn’t know it was talked of generally,” replied the widow, plaintively; “but I have said that we felt lonesome, Mr. Purtett bein’ gone, and if the new minister —”

Here she paused. The cut of Wade’s jib was unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister. He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwholesome black, like the same. His bronzed face was frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on Original Sin or Total Depravity.

“I am not the new minister,” said Wade, smiling slightly over his moustache; “but a new Superintendent for the Foundry.”

“Mr. Whiffler is goin’?” exclaimed Mrs. Purtett.

She looked at her daughter, who gave a little sob and ran out of the room.

“What makes my daughter Belle feel bad,” says the widow, “is, that she had a friend, — well, it isn’t too much to say that they was as good as engaged, — and he was foreman of the Foundry finishin’-shop. But somehow Whiffler spoilt him, just as he spoils everything he touches; and last winter, when Belle was away, William Tarbox — that’s his name, and his head is runnin’ over with inventions — took to spreein’ and liquor, and got ashamed of himself, and let down from a foreman to a hand, and is all the while lettin’ down lower.”

The widow’s heart thus opened. Wade walked in as consoler. This also opened the lodgings to him. He was presently installed in the large and small front-rooms up-stairs, unpacking his traps, and making himself permanently at home.

Superintendent Whiffler came over, by and by, to see his successor. He did not like his looks. The new man should have looked mean or weak or rascally, to suit the outgoer.

“How long do you expect to stay?” asks Whiffler, with a half-sneer, watching Wade hanging a map and a print vis-à-vis.

“Until the men and I, or the Company and I, cannot pull together.”

“I’ll give you a week to quarrel with both, and another to see the whole concern go to everlasting smash. And now, if you’re ready, I’ll go over the accounts with you and prove it.”

Whiffler himself, insolent, cowardly, and a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did not mention this conviction.

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Love and Skates/Chapter III

At ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the safe-key to Wade, and departed to ruin some other property, if he could get one to ruin. Wade walked with him to the gate.
 * Chapter III. How to Behead a Hydra!

“I’m glad to be out of a sinking ship,” said the ex-boss. “The Works will go down, sure as shooting. And I think myself well out of the clutches of these men. They’re a bullying, swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians. Foremen are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of my life with ’em.”

“A bad lot, are they?” mused Wade, as he returned to the office. “I must give them a little sharp talk by way of Inaugural.”

He had the bell tapped and the men called together in the main building.

Much work was still going on in an inefficient, unsystematic way.

While hot fires were roaring in the great furnaces, smoke rose from the dusty beds where Titanic castings were cooling. Great cranes, manacled with heavy chains, stood over the furnace-doors, ready to lift steaming jorums of melted metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to swallow.

Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the fire to ripen it. Here was a stack of long, rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelahs of the Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses, lying higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much use in civilization.

Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel, large enough to keep the knobbiest of asteroids revolving without a wabble; a cross-head, cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going steamer breast the waves; a light walking-beam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the river; and other members of machines, only asking to be put together and vivified by steam and they would go at their work with a will.

From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy folds of a dim atmosphere, half dust, half smoke. A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found this compound quite palpable and solid, and they moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side by side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its perpendicular.

Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him and saw so much good stuff and good force wasting for want of a little will and skill to train the force and manage the stuff. He abhorred bankruptcy and chaos.

“All they want here is a head,” he thought.

He shook his own. The brain within was well developed with healthy exercise. It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument.

At the tap of the bell, the “bad lot” of men came together. They numbered more than two hundred, though the Foundry was working short. They had been notified that “that gonoph of a Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller was in, who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see ’em and tell ’em whether he was a damn’ fool or not.”

So all hands collected from the different parts of the Foundry to see the head.

They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing, — a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long pokers like lances.

Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like Blackfeet in their war-paint. Their hairy chests showed, where some men parade elaborate shirt-bosoms. Some had their sleeves pushed up to the elbow to exhibit their compact flexors and extensors. Some had rolled their flannel up to the shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper arm. They wore aprons tied about the neck, like the bibs of our childhood, — or about the waist, like the coquettish articles which young house-wives affect. But there was no coquetry in these great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib that ever suffered under bread-and-molasses or mud-pie treatment.

They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at ease, not without rough grace, in a sinuous line, coiled and knotted like a snake.

Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was to take down that Hydra’s two hundred crests of insubordination.

They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He read and ticketed each man, as he came up, — good, bad, or on the fence, — and marked each so that he would know him among a myriad.

The Hands faced the Head. It was a question whether the two hundred or the one would be master in Dunderbunk.

Which was boss? An old question. It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power, and there is always a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.

Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He waited a moment until the men were still. He was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. He stood easily on his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before. His mouth looked firm, his brow freighted, his nose clipper, — that the hands could see. But clipper noses are not always backed by a stout hull. Seemingly freighted brows sometimes carry nothing but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be all in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, a mere silly slit. All which the hands knew.

Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer, when it has a bar to shape.

“I’m the new Superintendent. Richard Wade is my name. I rang the bell because I wanted to see you and have you see me. You know as well as I do that these Works are in a bad way. They can’t stay so. They must come up and pay you regular wages and the Company profits. Every man of you has got to be here on the spot when the bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work. You haven’t been, — and you know it. You’ve turned out rotten iron, — stuff that any honest shop would be ashamed of. Now there’s to be a new leaf turned over here. You’re to be paid on the nail; but you’ve got to earn your money. I won’t have any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me. I shall work hard myself, and every man of you will, or he leaves the shop. Now, if anybody has a complaint to make, I’ll hear him before you all.”

The men were evidently impressed with Wade’s Inaugural. It meant something. But they were not to be put down so easily, after long misrule. There began to be a whisper, —

“B’il in, Bill Tarbox! and talk up to him!”

Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the new ruler.

Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he had been the but-end of riot and revolt at the Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler. He did not like to abdicate and give in to this new chap without testing him.

In a better mood, Bill would have liked Wade’s looks and words; but to-day he had a sore head, a sour face, and a bitter heart, from last night’s spree. And then he had heard — it was as well known already in Dunderbunk as if the town-crier had cried it — that Wade was lodging at Mrs. Purtett’s, where poor Bill was excluded. So Bill stepped forward as spokesman of the ruffianly element, and the immoral force gathered behind and backed him heavily.

Tarbox, too, was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. But he had sagged one inch for want of self-respect. He had spoilt his color and dyed his moustache. He wore foxy-black pantaloons tucked into red-topped boots, with the name of the maker on a gilt shield. His red-flannel shirt was open at the neck and caught with a black handkerchief. His damaged tile was in permanent crape for the late lamented Poole.

“We allow,” says Bill, in a tone half-way between Lablache’s De profundis and a burglar’s bull-dog’s snarl, “that we’ve did our work as good as need to be did. We ’xpect we know our rights. We ha’n’t ben treated fair, and I’m damned if we’re go’n’ to stan’ it.”

“Stop!” says Wade. “No swearing in this shop!”

“Who the Devil is go’n’ to stop it?” growled Tarbox.

“I am. Do you step back now, and let some one come out who can talk like a gentleman! “

“I’m damned if I stir till I’ve had my say out,” says Bill, shaking himself up and looking dangerous.

“Go back!”

Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous.

“Don’t tech me!” Bill threatened, squaring off.

He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.

Bill did not like the new Emperor’s method of compelling kotou. Round One of the mill had not given him enough.

He jumped up from his soft bed and made a vicious rush at Wade. But he was damaged by evil courses. He was fighting against law and order, on the side of wrong and bad manners.

The same fist met him again, and heavier.

Up went his heels! Down went his head! It struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard black pillow.

“Ring the bell to go to work!” said Wade, in a tone that made the ringer jump. “Now, men, take hold and do your duty and everything will go smooth!”

The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate champion, then at the new boss standing there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment of sledge-hammers.

They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be well governed, as all men do. They wanted disorder out and order in. The new man looked like a man, talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands give in with a good grace and go to work like honest fellows?

The line broke up. The hands went off to their duty. And there was never any more insubordination at Dunderbunk.

This was June.

Skates in the next chapter.

Love in good time afterward shall glide upon the scene.

title: Love and Skates/Chapter III


text:
Love and Skates/Chapter IV

The pioneer sunbeam of next Christmas morning rattled over the Dunderbunk hills, flashed into Richard Wade’s eyes, waked him, and was off, ricochetting across the black ice of the river.
 * Chapter IV. A Christmas Gift.

Wade jumped up, electrified and jubilant. He had gone to bed feeling quite too despondent for so healthy a fellow. Christmas Eve, the time of family meetings, reminded him how lonely he was. He had not a relative in the world, except two little nieces, — one as tall as his knee, the other almost up to his waist; and them he had safely bestowed in a nook of New England, to gain wit and virtues as they gained inches.

“I have had a stern and lonely life,” thought Wade, as he blew out his candle last night, “and what has it profited me?”

Perhaps the pioneer sunbeam answered this question with a truism, not always as applicable as in this case, — “A brave, able, self-respecting manhood is fair profit for any man’s first thirty years of life.”

But, answered or not, the question troubled Wade no more. He shot out of bed in tip-top spirits; shouted “Merry Christmas!” at the rising disk of the sun; looked over the black ice; thrilled with the thought of a long holiday for skating; and proceeded to dress in a knowing suit of rough clothes, singing, “Ah, non giunge! as he slid into them.

Presently, glancing from his south window, he observed several matinal smokes rising from the chimneys of a country-house a mile away, on a slope fronting the river.

“Peter Skerrett must be back from Europe at last,” he thought. “I hope he is as fine a fellow as he was ten years ago. I hope marriage has not made him a muff, and wealth a weakling.”

Wade went down to breakfast with an heroic appetite. His “Merry Christmas” to Mrs. Purtett was followed up by a ravished kiss and the gift of a silver butter-knife. The good widow did not know which to be most charmed with. The butter-knife was genuine, shining, solid silver, with her initials, M. B. P., Martha Bilsby Purtett, given in luxuriant flourishes; but then the kiss had such a fine twang, such an exhilarating titillation! The late Perry’s kisses, from first to last, had wanted point. They were, as the Spanish proverb would put it, unsavory as unsalted eggs, for want of a moustache. The widow now perceived, with mild regret, how much she had missed when she married “a man all shaven and shorn.” Her cheek, still fair, though forty, flushed with novel delight, and she appreciated her lodger more than ever.

Wade’s salutation to Belle Purtett was more distant. There must be a little friendly reserve between a handsome young man and a pretty young woman several grades lower in the social scale, living in the same house. They were on the most cordial terms, however; and her gift — of course embroidered slippers — and his to her — of course “The Illustrated Poets,” in Turkey morocco — were exchanged with tender good-will on both sides.

“We shall meet on the ice, Miss Belle,” said Wade. “It is a day of a thousand for skating.”

“Mr. Ringdove says you are a famous skater,” Belle rejoined. “He saw you on the river yesterday evening.”

“Yes; Tarbox and I were practising to exhibit to-day; but I could not do much with my dull old skates.”

Wade breakfasted deliberately, as a holiday morning allowed, and then walked down to the Foundry. There would be no work done to-day, except by a small gang keeping up the fires. The Superintendent wished only to give his First Semi-Annual Report an hour’s polishing, before he joined all Dunderbunk on the ice.

It was a halcyon day, worthy of its motto, “Peace on earth, good-will to men.” The air was electric, the sun overflowing with jolly shine, the river smooth and sheeny from the hither bank to the snowy mountains opposite.

“I wish I were Rembrandt, to paint this grand shadowy interior,” thought Wade, as he entered the silent, deserted Foundry. “With the gleam of the snow in my eyes, it looks deliciously warm and chiaroscuro. When the men are here and ‘fervet opus,’ — the pot boils, — I cannot stop to see the picturesque.”

He opened his office, took his Report and began to complete it with ,s ;s, and .s in the right places.

All at once the bell of the Works rang out loud and clear. Presently the Superintendent became aware of a tramp and a bustle in the building. By and by came a tap at the office-door.

“Come in,” said Wade, and, enter young Perry Purtett.

Perry was a boy of fifteen, with hair the color of fresh sawdust, white eyebrows, and an uncommonly wide-awake look. Ringdove, his father’s successor, could never teach Perry the smirk, the grace, and the seductiveness of the counter, so the boy had found his place in the finishing-shop of the Foundry.

“Some of the hands would like to see you for half a jiff, Mr. Wade,” said he. “Will you come along, if you please?”

There was a good deal of easy swagger about Perry, as there is always in boys and men whose business is to watch the lunging of steam-engines. Wade followed him. Perry led the way with a jaunty air that said, —

“Room here! Out of the way, you lubberly bits of cast-iron! Be careful, now, you big derricks, or I’ll walk right over you! Room now for Me and My suite!”

This pompous usher conducted the Superintendent to the very spot in the main room of the Works where, six months before, the Inaugural had been pronounced and the first Veto spoken and enacted.

And there, as six months before, stood the Hands awaiting their Head. But the aprons, the red shirts, and the grime of working-days were off, and the whole were in holiday rig, — as black and smooth and shiny from top to toe as the members of a Congress of Undertakers.

Wade, following in the wake of Perry, took his stand facing the rank, and waited to see what he was summoned for. He had not long to wait.

To the front stepped Mr. William Tarbox, foreman of the finishing-shop, no longer a bhoy, but an erect, fine-looking fellow, with no nitrate in his moustache, and his hat permanently out of mourning for the late Mr. Poole.

“Gentlemen,” said Bill, “I move that this meeting organize by appointing Mr. Smith Wheelwright Chairman. As many as are in favor of this motion, please to say, ‘Ay.’”

“Ay!” said the crowd, very loud and big. And then every man looked at his neighbor, a little abashed, as if he himself had made all the noise.

“This is a free country,” continues Bill. “Every woter has a right to a fair shake. Contrary minds, ‘No.’”

No contrary minds. The crowd uttered a great silence. Every man looked at his neighbor, surprised to find how well they agreed.

“Unanimous!” Tarbox pronounced. “No fractious minorities here, to block the wheels of legislation!”

The crowd burst into a roar at this significant remark, and, again abashed, dropped portcullis on its laughter, cutting off the flanks and tail of the sound.

“Mr. Purtett, will you please conduct the Chairman to the Chair,” says Bill, very stately.

“Make way here!” cried Perry, with the manner of a man seven feet high. “Step out now, Mr. Chairman!”

He took a big, grizzled, docile-looking fellow patronizingly by the arm, led him forward, and chaired him on a large cylinder-head, in the rough, just hatched out of its mould.

“Bang away with that, and sing out ‘Silence!’” says the knowing boy, handing Wheelwright an iron bolt, and taking his place beside him, as prompter.

The docile Chairman obeyed. At his breaking silence by hooting “Silence!” the audience had another mighty bobtailed laugh.

“Say, ‘Will some honorable member state the object of this meeting?’” whispered the prompter.

“Will some honorable member state the subject of this ’ere meetin’?” says Chair, a little bashful and confused.

Bill Tarbox advanced, and, with a formal bow, began, —

“Mr. Chairman —”

“Say, ‘Mr. Tarbox has the floor’” piped Perry.

“Mr. Tarbox has the floor,” diapasoned the Chair.

“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen —” Bill began, and stopped.

“Say, ‘Proceed, Sir!’” suggested Perry, which the senior did, magnifying the boy’s whisper a dozen times.

Again Bill began and stopped.

“Boys,” said he, dropping grandiloquence, “when I accepted the office of Orator of the Day at our primary, and promised to bring forward our Resolutions in honor of Mr. Wade with my best speech, I didn’t think I was going to have such a head of steam on that the walves would get stuck and the piston jammed and I couldn’t say a word.

“But,” he continued, warming up, “when I think of the Indian powwow we had in this very spot six months ago, — and what a mean bloat I was, going to the stub-tail dogs with my hat over my eyes, — and what a hard lot we were all round, livin’ on nothing but argee whiskey, and rampin’ off on benders, instead of makin’ good iron, — and how the Works was flat broke, — and how Dunderbunk was full of women crying over their husbands and mothers ashamed of their sons, — boys, when I think how things was, and see how they are, and look at Mr. Wade standing there like a —”

Bill hesitated for a comparison.

“Like a thousand of brick,” Perry Purtett suggested, sotto voce.

The Chairman took this as a hint to himself.

“Like a thousand of brick,” he said, with the voice of a Stentor.

Here the audience roared and cheered, and the Orator got a fresh start.

“When you came, Mr. Wade,” he resumed, “we was about sick of putty-beads and sneaks that didn’t know enough or didn’t dare to make us stand round and bone in. You walked in, b’ilin’ over with grit. You took hold as if you belonged here. You made things jump like a two-headed tarrier. All we wanted was a live man, to say, ‘Here, boys, all together now! You’ve got your stint, and I’ve got mine. I’m boss in this shop, — but I can’t do the first thing, unless every man pulls his pound. Now, then, my hand is on the throttle, grease the wheels, oil the walves, poke the fires, hook on, and let’s yank her through with a will!’”

At this figure the meeting. showed a tendency to cheer. “Silence!” Perry sternly suggested. “Silence!” repeated the Chair.

“Then,” continued the Orator, “you wasn’t one of the uneasy kind, always fussin’ and cussin’ round. You wasn’t always spyin’ to see we didn’t take home a cross-tail or a hundred-weight of cast-iron in our pants’ pockets, or go to swiggin’ hot metal out of the ladles on the sly.”

Here an enormous laugh requited Bill’s joke. Perry prompted, the Chair banged with his bolt and cried, “Order!”

“Well, now, boys,” Tarbox went on, “what has come of having one of the right sort to be boss? Why, this. The Works go ahead, stiddy as the North River. We work full time and full-handed. We turn out stuff that no shop needs to be ashamed of. Wages is on the nail. We have a good time generally. How is that, boys, — Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen?”

“That’s so!” from everybody.

“And there’s something better yet,” Bill resumed. “Dunderbunk used to be full of crying women. They’ve stopped crying now.”

Here the whole assemblage, Chairman and all, burst into an irrepressible cheer.

“But I’m making my speech as long as a lightning-rod,” said the speaker. “I’ll put on the brakes, short. I guess Mr. Wade understands pretty well, now, how we feel; and if he don’t, here it all is in shape, in this document, with ‘Whereas’ at the top and ‘Resolved’ entered along down in five places. Mr. Purtett, will you hand the Resolutions to the Superintendent?”

Perry advanced and did his office loftily, much to the amusement of Wade and the workmen.

“Now,” Bill resumed, “we wanted, besides, to make you a little gift, Mr. Wade, to remember the day by. So we got up a subscription, and every man put in his dime. Here’s the present, — hand ’em over, Perry!

“There, Sir, is to be had in York City, made for work, and no nonsense about ’em. We Dunderbunk boys give ’em to you, one for all, and hope you’ll like ’em and beat the world skating, as you do in all the things we’ve knowed you try.

“Now, boys,” Bill perorated, “before I retire to the shades of private life, I motion we give Three Cheers — regular Toplifters — for Richard Wade!”

“Hurrah! Wade and Good Government!” “Hurrah! Wade and Prosperity!” “Hurrah! Wade and the Women’s Tears Dry!”

Cheers like the shout of Achilles! Wielding sledges is good for the bellows, it appears. Toplifters! Why, the smoky black rafters overhead had to tug hard to hold the roof on. Hurrah! From every comer of the vast building came back rattling echoes. The Works, the machinery, the furnaces, the stuff, all had their voice to add to the verdict.

Magnificent music! and our Anglo-Saxon is the only race in the world civilized enough to join in singing it. We are the only hurrahing people, — the only brood hatched in a “Hurrah’s nest.”

Silence restored, the Chairman, prompted by Perry, said, “Gentlemen, Mr. Wade has the floor for a few remarks.”

Of course Wade had to speak, and did. He would not have been an American in America else. But his heart was too full to say more than a few hearty and earnest words of good feeling.

“Now, men,” he closed, “I want to get away on the river and see if my skates will go as they look; so I’ll end by proposing three cheers for Smith Wheelwright, our Chairman, three for our Orator, Tarbox, three for Old Dunderbunk, — Works, Men, Women, and Children; and one big cheer for Old Father Iron, as rousing a cheer as ever was roared.”

So they gave their three times three with enormous enthusiasm. The roof shook, the furnaces rattled, Perry Purtett banged with the Chairman’s hammer, the great echoes thundered through the Foundry.

And when they ended with one gigantic cheer for IRON, tough and true, the weapon, the tool, and the engine of all civilization, — it seemed as if the uproar would never cease until Father Iron himself heard the call in his smithy away under the magnetic pole, and came clanking up, to return thanks in person.

title: Love and Skates/Chapter IV


text:
Love and Skates/Chapter V

Of all the plays that are played by this playful world on its play-days, there is no play like Skating.
 * Chapter V. Skating as a Fine Art.

To prepare a board for the moves of this game of games, a panel for the drawings of this Fine Art, a stage for the entrechats and pirouettes of its graceful adepts, Zero, magical artificer, had been, for the last two nights, sliding at full speed up and down the North River.

We have heard of Midas, whose touch made gold, and of the virgin under whose feet sprang roses; but Zero’s heels and toes were armed with more precious influences. They left a diamond way, where they slid, — a hundred and fifty miles of diamond, half a mile wide and six inches thick.

Diamond can only reflect sunlight; ice can contain it. Zero’s product, finer even than diamond, was filled — at the rate of a million to the square foot — with bubbles immeasurably little, and yet every one big enough to comprise the entire sun in small, but without alteration or abridgement. When the sun rose, each of these wonderful cells was ready to catch the tip of a sunbeam and house it in a shining abode.

Besides this, Zero had inlaid its work, all along shore, with exquisite marquetry of leaves, brown and evergreen, of sprays and twigs, reeds and grasses. No parquet in any palace from Fontainebleau to St. Petersburg could show such delicate patterns, or could gleam so brightly, though polished with all the wax in Christendom.

On this fine pavement, all the way from Cohoes to Spuyten Duyvil, Jubilee was sliding without friction, the Christmas morning of these adventures.

Navigation was closed. Navigators had leisure. The sloops and schooners were frozen in along shore, the tugs and barges were laid up in basins, the floating palaces were down at New York, deodorizing their bar-rooms, regilding their bridal 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 “I. 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

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 stem, — 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 does his work as Church paints, as Barley draws, as Palmer chisels, as Whittier strikes the lyre, and Longfellow the dulcimer; he is as terse as Emerson, as clever as Holmes, as graceful as Curtis; he is as calm as Seward, as keen as Phillips, as stalwart as Beecher; he is Garibaldi, he is Kit Carson, he is Blondin; he is as complete as the steamboat Metropolis, as Steers’s yacht, as Singer’s sewing-machine, as Colt’s revolver, as the steam-plough, as Civilization.” You wish to be so ranked among the people and things that lead the age; — consider the qualities you must have, and while you consider, keep your eye on Richard Wade, for he has them all in perfection.

First, — of your physical qualities. You must have lungs, not bellows; and an active heart, not an assortment of sluggish auricles and ventricles. You must have legs, not shanks. Their shape is unimportant, except that they must not interfere at the knee. You must have muscles, not flabbiness; sinews like wire; nerves like sunbeams; and a thin layer of flesh to cushion the gable-ends, where you will strike, if you tumble, — which, once for all be it said, you must never do. You must be all momentum, and no inertia. You must be one part grace, one force, one agility, and the rest caoutchouc, Manilla hemp, and watch-spring. Your machine, your body, must be thoroughly obedient. It must go just so far and no farther. You have got to be as unerring as a planet holding its own, emphatically, between forces centripetal and centrifugal. Your aplomb must be as absolute as the pounce of a falcon.

So much for a few of the physical qualities necessary to be a Great Artist in Skating. See Wade, how he shows them!

Now for the moral and intellectual. Pluck is the first; — it always is the first quality. Then enthusiasm. Then patience. Then pertinacity. Then a fine æsthetic faculty, — in short, good taste. Then an orderly and submissive mind, that can consent to act in accordance with the laws of Art. Circumstances, too, must have been reasonably favorable. That well-known sceptic, the King of tropical Bantam, could not skate, because he had never seen ice and doubted even the existence of solid water. Widdrington, after the Battle of Chevy Chace, could not have skated, because he had no legs, — poor fellow!

But granted the ice and the legs, then if you begin in the elastic days of youth, when cold does not sting, tumbles do not bruise, and duckings do not wet; if you have pluck and ardor enough to try everything; if you work slowly ahead and stick to it; if you have good taste and a lively invention; if you are a man, and not a lubber; — then, in fine, you may become a Great Skater, just as with equal power and equal pains you may put your grip on any kind of Greatness.

The technology of skating is imperfect. Few of the great feats, the Big Things, have admitted names. If I attempted to catalogue Wade’s achievements, this chapter might become an unintelligible rhapsody. A sheet of paper and a pen-point cannot supply the place of a sheet of ice and a skate-edge. Geometry must have its diagrams, Anatomy its corpus to carve. Skating also refuses to be spiritualized into a Science; it remains an Art, and cannot be expressed in a formula.

Skating has its Little Go, its Great Go, its Baccalaureate, its M. A., its F. S. D. (Doctor of Frantic Skipping), its A. G. D. (Doctor of Airy Gliding), its N. T. D. (Doctor of No Tumbles), and finally its highest degree, U. P. (Unapproachable Podographer).

Wade was U. P.

There were a hundred of Dunderbunkers who had passed their Little Go and could skate forward and backward easily. A half-hundred, perhaps, were through the Great Go; these could do outer edge freely. A dozen had taken the Baccalaureate, and were proudly repeating the pirouettes and spread-eagles of that degree. A few could cross their feet, on the edge, forward and backward, and shift edge on, the same foot, and so were Magistri Artis.

Wade, U. P., added to these an indefinite list of combinations and fresh contrivances. He spun spirals slow, and spirals neck or nothing. He pivoted on one toe, with the other foot cutting rings, inner and outer edge, forward and back. He skated on one foot better than the M. A.s could on both. He ran on his toes; he slid on his heels; he cut up shines like a sunbeam on a bender; he swung, light as if he could fly, if he pleased, like a wing-footed Mercury; he glided as if will, not muscle, moved him; he tore about in frenzies; his pivotal leg stood firm, his balance leg flapped like a graceful pinion; he tamed somersets; he jumped, whirling backward as he went, over a platoon of boys laid flat on the ice; — the last boy winced, and thought he was amputated; but Wade flew over, and the boy still holds together as well as most boys. Besides this, he could write his name, with a flourish at the end, like the rubrica of a Spanish hidalgo. He could podograph any letter, and multitudes of ingenious curlicues which might pass for the alphabets of the unknown tongues. He could not tumble.

It was Fine Art.

Bill Tarbox sometimes pressed the champion hard. But Bill stopped just short of Fine Art, in High Artisanship.

How Dunderbunk cheered this wondrous display! How delighted the whole population was to believe they possessed the best skater on the North River! How they struggled to imitate! How they tumbled, some on their backs, some on their faces, some with dignity like the dying Caesar, some rebelliously like a cat thrown out of a garret, some limp as an ancient acrobate! How they laughed at themselves and at each other!

“It’s all in the new skates,” says Wade, apologizing for his unapproachable power and finish.

“It’s suthin’ in the man,” says Smith Wheelwright.

“Now chase me, everybody,” said Wade.

And, for a quarter of an hour, he dodged the merry crowd, until at last, breathless, he let himself be touched by pretty Belle Purtett, rosiest of all the Dunderbunk bevy of rosy maidens on the ice.

“He rayther beats Bosting,” says Captain Isaac Ambuster to Smith Wheelwright. “It’s so cold there that they can skate all the year round; but he beats them, all the same.”

The Captain was sitting in a queer little bowl of a skiff on the deck of his tug, and rocking it like a cradle, as he talked.

“Bosting’s always hard to beat in anything,” rejoined the ex-Chairman. “But if Bosting is to be beat, here’s the man to do it.”

And now, perhaps, gentle reader, you think I have said enough in behalf of a limited fraternity, the Skaters.

The next chapter, then, shall take up the cause of the Lovers, a more numerous body, and we will see whether True Love, which never makes “smooth running,” can help its progress by a skate-blade.

title: Love and Skates/Chapter V


text:
Love and Skates/Chapter VI

Christmas noon at Dunderbunk. Every skater was in galloping glee, — as the electric air, and the sparkling sun, and the glinting ice had a right to expect that they all should be.
 * Chapter VI. “Go Not, Happy Day, Till the Maiden Yields.”

Belle Purtett, skating simply and well, had never looked so pretty and graceful. So thought Bill Tarbox.

He had not spoken to her, nor she to him, for more than six months. The poor fellow was ashamed of himself and penitent for his past bad courses. And so, though he longed to have his old flame recognize him again, and though he was bitterly jealous and miserably afraid he should lose her, he had kept away and consumed his heart like a true despairing lover.

But to-day Bill was a lion, only second to Wade, the unapproachable lion-in-chief. Bill was reinstated in public esteem, and had won back his standing in the Foundry. He had to-day made a speech which Perry Purtett gave everybody to understand “none of Senator Bill Seward’s could hold the tallow to.” Getting up the meeting and presenting Wade with the skates was Bill’s own scheme, and it had turned out an eminent success. Everything began to look bright to him. His past life drifted out of his mind like the rowdy tales he used to read in the Sunday newspapers.

He had watched Belle Purtett all the morning, and saw that she distinguished nobody with her smiles, not even that coq du village, Ringdove. He also observed that she was furtively watching him.

By and by she sailed out of the crowd, and went off a little way to practise.

“Now,” said he to himself, “sail in. Bill Tarbox!”

Belle heard the sharp strokes of a powerful skater coming after her. Her heart divined who this might be. She sped away like the swift Camilla, and her modest drapery showed just enough and “ne quid nimis” of her ankles.

Bill admired the grace and the ankles immensely. But his hopes sank a little at the flight, — for he thought she perceived his chase and meant to drop him. Bill had not had a classical education, and knew nothing of Galatea in the Eclogue, — how she did not hide, until she saw her swain was looking fondly after.

“She wants to get away,” he thought. “But she sha’n’t, — no, not if I have to follow her to Albany.”

He struck out mightily. Presently the swift Camilla let herself be overtaken.

“Good morning, Miss Purtett.” (Dogged air.)

“Good morning, Mr. Tarbox.” (Taken-by-surprise air.)

“I’ve been admiring your skating,” says Bill, trying to be cool.

“Have you?” rejoins Belle, very cool and distant.

“Have you been long on the ice?” he inquired, hypocritically.

“I came on two hours ago with Mr. Ringdove and the girls,” returned she, with a twinkle which said, “Take that, Sir, for pretending you did not see me.”

“You’ve seen Mr. Wade skate, then,” Bill said, ignoring Ringdove.

“Yes; isn’t it splendid?” Belle replied, kindling.

“Tip-top!”

“But then he does everything better than anybody.”

“So he does!” Bill said, — true to his friend, and yet beginning to be jealous of this enthusiasm. It was not the first time he had been jealous of Wade; but he had quelled his fears, like a good fellow.

Belle perceived Bill’s jealousy, and could have cried for joy. She had known as little of her once lover’s heart as he of hers. She only knew that he stopped coming to see her when he fell, and had not renewed his visits now that he was risen again. If she had not been charmingly ruddy with the brisk air and exercise, she would have betrayed her pleasure at Bill’s jealousy with a fine blush.

The sense of recovered power made her wish to use it again. She must tease him a little. So she continued, as they skated on in good rhythm, —

“Mother and I wouldn’t know what to do without Mr. Wade. We like him so much,” — said ardently.

What Bill feared was true, then, he thought. Wade, noble fellow, worthy to win any woman’s heart, had fascinated his landlady’s daughter.

“I don’t wonder you like him,” said he. “He deserves it.”

Belle was touched by her old lover’s forlorn tone.

“He does indeed,” she said. “He has helped and taught us all so much. He has taken such good care of Perry. And then” — here she gave her companion a little look and a little smile — “he speaks so kindly of you, Mr. Tarbox.”

Smile, look, and words electrified Bill. He gave such a spring on his skates that he shot far ahead of the lady. He brought himself back with a sharp turn.

“He has done kinder than he can speak,” says Bill. “He has made a man of me again. Miss Belle.”

“I know it. It makes me very happy to hear you able to say so of yourself.” She spoke gravely.

“Very happy” — about anything that concerned him? Bill had to work off his over-joy at this by an exuberant flourish. He whisked about Belle, — outer edge backward. She stopped to admire. He finished by describing on the virgin ice, before her, the letters B. P., in his neatest style of podography, — easy letters to make, luckily.

“Beautiful!” exclaimed Belle. “What are those letters? Oh! B. P.? What do they stand for?”

“Guess!”

“I’m so dull,” said she, looking bright as a diamond. “Let me think! B. P.? British Poets, perhaps.”

“Try nearer home!”

“What are you likely to be thinking of that begins with B. P.? — O, I know! Boiler Plates!”

She looked at him, — innocent as a lamb. Bill looked at her, delighted with her little coquetry. A woman without coquetry is insipid as a rose without scent, as Champagne without bubbles, or as corned beef without mustard.

“It’s something I’m thinking of most of the time,” says he, “but I hope it’s softer than Boiler Plates. B. P. stands for Miss Isabella Purtett.”

“Oh!” says Belle, and she skated on in silence.

“You came down with Alonzo Ringdove?” Bill asked, suddenly, aware of another pang after a moment of peace.

“He came with me and his sisters,” she replied.

Yes; poor Ringdove had dressed himself in his shiniest black, put on his brightest patent-leather boots, with his new swan-necked skates newly strapped over them, and wore his new dove-colored overcoat with the long skirts, on purpose to be lovely in the eyes of Belle on this occasion. Alas, in vain!”

“Mr. Ringdove is a great friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“If you ever came to see me now, you would know who my friends are, Mr. Tarbox.”

“Would you be my friend again, if I came, Miss Belle?”

“Again? I have always been so, — always, Bill.”

“Well, then, something more than my friend, — now that I am trying to be worthy of more, Belle?”

“What more can I be?” she said, softly.

“My wife.”

She curved to the right. He followed. To the left. He was not to be shaken off.

“Will you promise me not to say walves instead of valves, Bill?” she said, looking pretty and saucy as could be. “I know, to say W for V is fashionable in the iron business; but I don’t like it.”

“What a thing a woman is to dodge!” says Bill. “Suppose I told you that men brought up inside of boilers, hammering on the inside against twenty hammering like Wulcans on the outside, get their ears so dumfounded that they can’t tell whether they are saying valves or walves, wice or virtue, — suppose I told you that, — what would you say, Belle?”

“Perhaps I’d say that you pronounce virtue so well, and act it so sincerely, that I can’t make any objection to your other words. If you’d asked me to be your vife, Bill, I might have said I didn’t understand; but wife I do understand, and I say —”

She nodded, and tried to skate off. Bill stuck close to her side.

“Is this true, Belle?” he said, almost doubtfully.

“True as truth!”

She put out her hand. He took it, and they skated on together, — hearts beating to the rhythm of their movements. The uproar and merriment of the village came only faintly to them. It seemed as if all Nature was hushed to listen to their plighted troth, their words of love renewed, more earnest for long suppression. The beautiful ice spread before them, like their life to come, a pathway untouched by any sorrowful or weary footstep. The blue sky was cloudless. The keen air stirred the pulses like the vapor of frozen wine. The benignant mountains westward kindly surveyed the happy pair, and the sun seemed created to warm and cheer them.

“And you forgive me, Belle?” said the lover. “I feel as if I had only gone bad to make me know how much better going right is.”

“I always knew you would find it out. I never stopped hoping and praying for it.”

“That must have been what brought Mr. Wade here.”

“Oh, I did hate him so, Bill, when I heard of something that happened between you and him! I thought him a brute and a tyrant. I never could get over it, until he told mother that you were the best machinist he ever knew, and would some time grow to be a great inventor.”

“I’m glad you hated him. I suffered rattlesnakes and collapsed flues for fear you’d go and love him.”

“My affections were engaged” she said with simple seriousness.

“Oh, if I’d only thought so long ago! How lovely you are!” exclaims Bill, in an ecstasy. “And how refined! And how good! God bless you!”

He made up such a wishful mouth, — so wishful for one of the pleasurable duties of mouths, that Belle blushed, laughed, and looked down, and as she did so saw that one of her straps was trailing.

“Please fix it, Bill,” she said, stopping and kneeling.

Bill also knelt, and his wishful mouth immediately took its chance.

A manly smack and sweet little feminine chirp sounded as their lips met.

Boom! twanging gay as the first tap of a marriage-bell, a loud crack in the ice rang musically for leagues up and down the river. “Bravo!” it seemed to say. “Well done. Bill Tarbox! Try again!” Which the happy fellow did, and the happy maiden permitted.

“Now,” said Bill, “let us go and hug Mr. Wade!”

“What! Both of us?” Belle protested. “Mr. Tarbox, I am ashamed of you!”

title: Love and Skates/Chapter VI


text:
Saxe v. State College Area School District/Concurrence Rendell

RENDELL, Circuit Judge, concurring:

I write separately only to note my strong disagreement with the notion, espoused by the District Court and discussed at length in Part II.B of the majority opinion, that the judicial analysis of permissible restrictions on speech in a given setting should be affected -- let alone dictated -- by legislative enactments intended to proscribe activity that could be classified as "harassment." Our attempt at reasoning through this postulate should demonstrate its futility, given the numerous variables that impact on any determination regarding the limits of permissible speech and the rigorous analysis that we must follow in every First Amendment case -- the analysis that our opinion does in fact follow in reaching the result in this case.

Perhaps the only way, or time, that such legislation could be a guide would be if its provisions were identical to the policy at issue, or if in a case involving an as-applied challenge to a policy, the legislative provisions addressed every aspect of the particular factual setting at issue. Even then, I submit that it would be the reasoning by a court upholding its constitutionality, rather than the legislation itself, that would provide the necessary guidance.

I view the use of harassment legislation as an especially inappropriate barometer here because this case is not a harassment case. Rather, it is framed by appellants as a First Amendment speech case. Moreover, it is a school speech case. While reliance on provisions of harassment laws or policies might be an easy way to resolve difficult cases such as this one, therein lies the rub--there are no easy ways in the complex area of First Amendment jurisprudence.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Harding, Chester

HARDING, Chester, American portrait painter: b. Conway, Mass., 1 Sept 1792; d. Boston, 1 April 1866. As an artist he was self-taught, his trade being that of a turner. He fought as a soldier in the War of 1812, and found employment on his discharge as a sign-painter in Pittsburgh, Pa. Crossing the ocean he became a favorite portrait painter in London and found patronage among the royal family.

His ‘Portrait of Daniel Webster’ is owned by the New York Bar Association, while his ‘Portrait of John Randolph’ is in the Corcoran Gallery, Washington.