Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! After other skaters appear,--young men and boys,--who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness and moves regally like a king.

One afternoon Mr.Emerson and Mr.Thoreau went with him down the river.

Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice,--very remarkable, but very ugly methought.

Next him followed Mr.Hawthorne, who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave.
Mr.Emerson closed the line, evidently too weary to hold himself erect, pitching headforemost, half lying on the air.

He came in to rest himself, and said to me that Hawthorne was a tiger, a bear, a lion,--in short, a satyr, and there was no tiring him out; and he might be the death of a man like himself.