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Beebumble," I exclaimed, "what is the matter? "Ah!" he replied, and so replying he made me cry, as you know he always does, by the force with which he wrings my hand, "Mrs. Beebumble has abolished the horse's bearing-rein. "And a good thing, too," I rejoined; "give the poor brute his head." Ah! yes, my boy," he sighed, "that's all right enough, but when will she abolish my bearing-rein? When is a husband to have his head?" I was unable to answer.

• 66

RINKING.

THE fascination which wheels possess for the human imagination is assuredly one of the most wonderful mysteries of our nature; yet strange to say, it would seem to have escaped the notice of philosophers, ancient and modern. Neither Tacitus nor Tupper has made the faintest allusion to it; Mill, Carlyle, and Darwin, are alike silent upon the subject, but not so the poets. Poetry abounds in metaphorical references to this most marvellous affinity. We are all familiar with the wheel of fortune, and everybody knows that our life is a curious contrivance of wheels within wheels. We are, to speak figuratively, dragged at the chariot-wheels of Fashion, Love, or Beauty, as the case may be ; and full many an ambitious man is, to use Dryden's simile, crushed "like the gasping charioteer beneath the wheel of his own car." "In the contemplation of our destinies," writes Lord Bacon, "look not too long upon the turning wheels of Vicissitude, lest we become giddy." Very pretty, too, is Pope's description of the flight of Mercury:

"Then, wheeling down the steep of heaven he flies,

And draws a radiant circle o'er the skies."

Milton also turns the wheel to good poetical purpose in many a melodious verse, and to quote his own words, "He throws his flight in many an airy wheel." Very potent and dictatorial is the phrase as used by Shakespeare," And you, my myrmidons, mark what I say! Attend me where I wheel," an adjuration which would serve well for a motto upon a skating-rink. Now and then the moralist presses the metaphor into his service, as in Dr. South's consolatory meditation :-" According to the common vicissitude and wheel of things, the proud and the insolent, after long trampling upon others, come at length to be trampled upon themselves," which, by the way, is very right and proper, and altogether consonant with that law of compensation or retribution which one loves to observe, as well in the moral as in the material world.

These purely metaphorical uses of wheels do but give fanciful illustration to the physical sense of joy which wheels, and whatsoever runneth upon them, appear to create within us. Who has not remarked with satisfaction the radiant glee of the poor man's little child who may be trundled along the street in a wagon extemporized out of an old box, and with wheels of thrice the diameter of a crown-piece? Analyze in a philosophic spirit that child's delight, and you shall find that it is identical in its origin, though not in its concomitants, with the pleasure which a lady derives from riding through Hyde Park or along Regent Street in her sumptuous brougham.

"Through the proud street she moves, the public gaze;
The turning wheel before the palace stays."

Cowley paints a pleasant picture of a lady in her car

riage :

"Where never yet did pry

The busy morning's curious eye,

The wheels of thy bold coach pass quick and free,
And all's an open road to thee."

There is manifestly, for young and old, for gentle and simple, something exhiliarating and delightful in rotary movement. Hence the pleasure one finds not only in riding on, but even in gazing at, the spruce equipages of the Four-in-hand Club in Rotten Row, and the splendid coaches which dash off in such gallant style from the White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly. Hence, too, in a great measure is drawn the satisfaction one experiences in travelling by express train. For lookers-on also there is a strange fascination in the very sight of the wheels whirling round upon the axles with dazzling celerity. It is nice to be rolled even in a wheelbarrow; how much nicer must it be to take your ease in a Pullman car, while you speed along at the rate of a mile a minute or so! To the same wonderful predilection for wheels and wheeling, or being wheeled, is to be ascribed the joy that some people find in gliding swiftly upon a bycicle, at the imminent risk of breaking their necks,-imbéciles à deux roues!

The rink mania is the newest and certainly not the least singular development of that rage for wheels which is unquestionably one of the strangest and strongest passions of the human heart. A superficial visitor, unversed in the ways of philosophy, and unobservant of the curious springs of action animating human heads and heels, might, on entering a rink for the first time,

find it no easy matter to understand why so many of his fellow-creatures, mercifully qualified by nature to move safely and pleasantly upon the soles of their feet, should prefer to run about upon castors, like tables and chairs. Such a reflection, however, could only redound to the discredit of the shallow brain from which it emanated, the connection between wheels and humanity being, as already shown, as old as the hills, or, indeed, as the valleys either, for the matter of that. Rinking is a graceful and brilliant accomplishment, which, based upon an irresistible instinct of our being, tends to elevate and refine all who do not lose either life or limb while engaged in the acquisition of it. Moreover, it may be said of it with perfect propriety that it gives softness and tenderness to the manners, making the votaries of the art benignly considerate of the comfort and convenience of their fellow-creatures. A Rink is the very palace of courtesy, and it is as wonderful as edifying to observe how polite people are to one another within the precincts of its magical circle. Emollit mores. That spiteful satisfaction at the disasters of their neighbors from which the best-conducted persons are not wholly free, in other places, appears to be quite unknown to the habitués of the Rink. Companionship in danger teaches mutual forbearance, and quells so effectually the dictates of ill-nature, that not a sneer distorts the faces of any of his or her associates, nor does one word of inhuman jubilation escape from their lips when a Rinker comes to grief. Nobody laughs, nobody jeers, everybody runs to his or her assistance, and everybody seems sorry for him or her, as the case may be. I saw a very fat gentleman come a fearful "cropper" the other day. Swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, I

sped to his aid, and I have no doubt that I should have rendered him essential service, had it not been that in trying to get at him, I tumbled heels over head myself, and have never been to say altogether right in my mind since.

66

Some delightful writer has remarked that so evanescent are the conditions of our earthly pilgrimage, that "a smile and a clasp of the hand as we pass," is the most we can hope to have of one another here below. Nowhere are these sad words truer than at a Skatingrink. It is touch-and-go with every one. If you mean to propose for a young lady in a rink, you would do well to come to the point as expeditiously as possible, while you and she are still able to maintain a perpendicular attitude. "Before I am run away with by my feelings, allow me to inquire, my dear young lady, what is your fortune?" So speaks a very prudent and pious parson in one of Miss Austen's novels. For "feelings" read castors," and the question may be recommended for the use of sentimental swains, making love in Mr. Plimpton's skates. It is delightful to observe what flirtation goes on in these places, and how successful young people seem to be in rinking into one another's affections. Very touching, too, is it to remark how gallantly solicitous are the young men for the safety of the young women, even when both are moving at a quiet pace, and with an ease and confidence which forbids the thought of peril. On such occasions it is no uncommon thing to see a male arm encircling a female waist, with an air of anxiety and a tenacity of pressure apparently in excess of the necessity, but still enchanting to behold. We sometimes witness the same sort of thing upon real ice, when it may be said with perfect truth of the skaters,

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