Various

“ The construction of an ice-boat is the point I want to touch on here, rather than upon the improbability of suffering bodily harm from taking part in the sport. Of course it is always possible to buy an ice-boat, new or second-hand; but it is much cheaper and certainly more pleasing and profitable to build your own craft, and it is by no means a difficult task. ”

“ It is a sport that many people discourage because of the danger supposed to be connected with it, but as a matter of fact it is less dangerous to sail and handle an ice-boat than it is to sail and handle a cat-boat. The only two things to be guarded against while running an ice-boat are sailing upon weak ice or near the edge of open water, and getting the runners caught in a crevice. In the one case you risk drowning, in the second you will very probably smash your machine and get mixed up in the wreckage yourself. ”

“ There will be no moon. A man-of-war's boat will be waiting; once in mid-stream, he will never reach the ships, for we know who mans the boat. The only difficulty will be to disarm suspicion of those who accompany him. They must be detained. You and another, who will be made known to you, will be playing at the farther table. You back him heavily with gold and lose your wager. ”

“ Ned was disappointed too in the appearance of Bolivar, about which he had heard so much, and before the sun was high he had bought a small dug-out canoe for eight dollars, about double its value, and the boys were off for their hundred-mile paddle against the current to Potosi, with canned provisions enough to last them all the way to the mines.
In the forty-eight hours that this journey consumed they saw just three men, all half-breed Indians, out in canoes fishing; but they tired of counting the alligators sunning themselves on mud banks. ”

“ The speed of an ice-boat is greater than that of anything but a locomotive, and under favorable conditions the boat can even distance the engine. A mile a minute has frequently been made by such boats on the Hudson River. I should not advise young ice-yachtsmen to attempt too great speed, however, until they have become thoroughly familiar with their craft; until they have learned every trick of the machine, and have secured such control over the tiller that they are masters of the ice-boat, and the ice-boat never master of them. ”

“ That gentleman was William Eustis Russell, then Governor of Massachusetts, the leader of the Democratic party in his State, and the possessor of a personal popularity which is not limited by her boundaries.
When you are a Freshman in college you are apt to look upon the big Senior Captain of the university crew as a person of unusual strength and size. You never imagine that he could have been different when he was a Freshman. You think he must have been born so, and grieve because in your class there are no Freshmen like him. ”

“ The holding of an annual field meeting was purely a secondary consideration, the principal desire in urging the formation of the association being to secure uniformity in the schedule of events contested at minor meets, establish a standard of record, and to fix a cast-iron definition of what constitutes an amateur with regard to athletic competition among schools. In favoring the holding of a field day this Department believed, and still believes, that the many smaller school meetings would be done away with, and that interscholastic sport would thus be rid of one of its worst features. ”

“ There are songs of home and of country, of love and fame, of heart and soul, of devotion and praise, with their sad and sweet or lively melodies, and with grand old chorals that stir the heart and lift it in worship. ”

“ If these large schools, such as Andover, and Worcester, and Lawrenceville, and the most important Boston schools, determine that a national championship is something worth working for—as it certainly is—-they will give the New York athletes a hard tussle for supremacy, and the latter may as well realize at once that it is none too early for them to begin hard training. ”

“ Above all things, shun thin ice as you would the open sea, and keep a constant lookout for cracks and rough spots. Under such conditions you are beyond danger, and you have at your command one of the finest of sports, and one of the keenest of sensations—rapid travel. ”

“ If it is possible to avoid it, an ice-boat should never be made to run before the wind, because the craft cannot be made to behave well under such conditions. There being no resistance to speak of, such as a cat-boat meets in the water, the ice-boat behaves badly when sailing free, runs up against the wind, and falls back continually. The best plan when sailing one of these machines off the wind is to take a zigzag course back and forth in the general direction of the wind, instead of running directly before it. ”

“ Potosi is a little native settlement at the junction of the two rivers, a hundred miles above Bolivar, and Bolivar, as you know, is two hundred and fifty miles up the Orinoco from here. They run the gold into bars at the mines, pack it two bars in a box, and send the box in a big canoe down to Potosi, with a guard of three or four armed men. From Potosi it goes in the steamer to Bolivar, and from Bolivar it is carried, along with other things, by great teams of forty and sixty bullocks over the mountains to Caracas, the capital, where it is coined in the mint. ”

“ Rearing is a thing to be prevented and not to be encouraged. Ice-boats have three runners, and they are intended to run on three runners, not on two. A good sailor will keep his boat down on all three runners all the time. If the wind is so strong as to lift the windward runner, send a man out on the end to hold it down with his weight. There is no danger in this position, and considerable sport. ”

“ For the runner shoes I should recommend soft iron. This becomes very much heated, to be sure, when the boat is running, but the soft metal chills rapidly as soon as the machine comes to a stop. This alternate heating and chilling soon give the runner's edge a degree of hardness fully equal to that of steel. (Let me caution novices at ice-boating against touching their runners, for the metal becomes so heated that it can inflict painful burns.) The runners proper—that is, the wooden part before the metal shoe is put on—should be cut of stiff, heavy oak. ”

“ Take New York city as an example. Almost every school in the local League holds a field day previous to the big meet in May controlled by the I.S.A.A. These little meetings could be done away with altogether. I am heartily in accord with Dr. White when he says that "the avidity for athletic competitions among boys has already been fostered too keenly."
That a National Association of schools can never be a representative one I think is not true. ”

“ In a day or so the old man drove up to the door and put out of his wagon a sturdy-looking lad of fifteen or so, black as the ace of spades, and clad in raiment seemingly made of selections from a rag-bag. ”

“ Ekholm will not be mistaken in his prognostications, and that, once started, Mr. Andrée's aerial craft will be carried away for hours in the direction of the North Pole. It would be almost unreasonable to hope that the aerial travellers will float exactly above the foremost point of our globe from the tropics. It would be enough for Mr. Andrée to make such a nearing as would enable him to bring back to civilization hundreds or thousands of photographs recording all the features of those unattainable regions. ”

“ If you send for proof, and then find yourself unable to make a drawing satisfactory to yourself, you can then retire from the contest merely by failing to forward a drawing. That is, you incur no obligation to submit a drawing. There are already about ten who are to try their talents. There is room for more. We print prize drawing and prize story together, provided, of course, that we receive a creditable illustration. ”

“ A BOX OF GOLD IN VENEZUELA. BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE.
"I'm going to have a shy at that gold when we get up to Potosi, Jack. I tell you forty thousand dollars in gold is worth looking for these days."
Ned Peterson leaned back in one of the great rocking-chairs on the upper gallery of the Hôtel de France, in Port of Spain, on the island of Trinidad, and puffed his cigar as complacently as though the gold were already in his trunk. He was fresh out of the School of Mines of Columbia College, and so felt at liberty to lay down the law to his fourteen-year-old brother Jack. ”

“ Jack hurriedly said, "and take you along. My mother will be glad to have a girl like you in the house, and it is only forty miles up the river to the mines. Is Felipe a sound sleeper?"
"I will see to it that he sleeps well to-night," Maria answered, with more meaning in her words than Jack understood at the time. "Hush! They are coming!"
While Felipe slept soundly in his hammock that night under the influence of an herb that Maria added to his tea, the two Americanos paddled their canoe rapidly up the Urubu River toward the mines. ”

“ The frame is built to rest on three skatelike runners, two of which are at the front—at either end of the base-line of the triangle—and one at the stern, the latter being the rudder. This rudder is controlled by a tiller, similar to the tiller of a sail-boat, and it is with this that all the handling of the machine is done, for the sails are seldom touched after they have once been set.
Many rigs have been tried on ice-boats, but experience has shown that the simple balanced jib-and-mainsail rig is the best. ”

“ In landscapes the first prize was given to a Maryland landscape. A wooded hill slopes down to a winding river, glimpses, of which can be seen through the trees, and perspective and distance are given by the range of mountains on the horizon. A large log marks the foreground, and near the edge of the river can be seen figures of several boys about to build a camp fire, the figures being quite small, and not so conspicuous as to first attract the eye when looking at the picture. ”

“ It is our purpose, after the completion of this trip to Washington in the next number of the Round Table, to take up bicycle routes in the vicinity of Chicago. Many letters have been received complaining that routes in the Eastern parts of the United States were being given entirely, while the readers in the Western and Central parts of the United States had nothing to interest them. It is necessary for us to explain that in course of time bicycle trips will be given in the vicinity of the principal centres of the United States ”

“ He kept up his athletics, and played half-back on the Harvard football team against Yale and All-Canada in the days when they played fifteen on a side, and Harvard teams won the games as much as a matter of course as Yale teams do nowadays. Young Russell's athletics made him quite a "horrible example" for parents to hold up, for before he was through college he had twice fractured his arm skating and coasting, broken a finger at baseball, and his nose at football ”

“ The majority of pictures of ice-boats that I have seen show the machines keeled over and speeding along over the ice on two runners, with a lot of terrified-looking passengers gripping beams and ropes. This is all very well for purposes of illustration, but it is not in exact conformity with fact. Ice-boats do sometimes "rear" as the pictures show us, but it is not because the steersman desires such conduct. ”

“ This exit must be made at any cost by directing the balloon into a wind tending to some part of the south. Mr. Andrée will certainly not pay attention to the geographical position of the spot where he is to alight. He will not care whether he lands on land or on sea. It will make no difference to him whether he sets foot on rocks or on cracking ice. He will trust equally to the frozen Atlantic or to the congelated Pacific if he can descend from cloudland above the horizon of a whaler. ”

“ Three or four people passed him, but he saw no signs of a man with a tendency to tap on his snuff-box. At last, as he looked down the lane, he perceived a small figure walking toward him with a quick nervous step. George did not know what to do, for he recognized at once that it was Mr. Anderson. Strange to say, as he was approaching he drew a snuff-box from his pocket. Then with a flood of light it dawned upon the lad that Mr. Anderson was one of the "Seven," and he understood why he had not been recognized, and also knew that there was an able hand at the helm. ”

“ Hatting is the leading occupation of the people of Danbury. This has been an occupation for at least a century, and now Danbury is probably the largest hatting town in the country. The factories, too, are extensive, and almost every manufacturer has a salesroom in every important city. All kinds of hats are manufactured—soft, stiff, and straw. We have fur factories, one of which has branches in Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, and other countries.
We have also silk manufactories, woollen-goods manufactories, and a machine-shop. ”

“ I suspect that this question made Jim Dandy fear that Mr. Prettyman did not have as much sense as a gentleman living in a fine house in town ought to have. He hesitated a moment, and then, moving his head sideways, said, "Aunty, she live over yonder."
This was most indefinite, but it was evidently the best that Jim Dandy could do for the moment, so Mr. Prettyman took him round to the kitchen at the back of the house and put him in charge of the cook, who was also the old housekeeper. And so Jim Dandy was engaged. ”

“ Andrée has had the upper part of his balloon covered with a silk canvas, so that the meshes of the net will be free from any accumulation of falling snowflakes.
In the desolate northern lands the sun is a trusty friend to the aeronaut. By constantly shining over the horizon during a number of months he develops almost a comfortable degree of heat, while without any intermission during the twenty-four hours of each day he supplies a sufficient quantity of light for all photographic purposes. ”

“ He was born in 1857 in the old college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard College is. His father was Charles Theodore Russell, a leading lawyer in the town, and in politics a stanch Democrat. William, or, as he was then called (and as some of his older friends still dare to call him) , "Billy" Russell, was the youngest of seven children, having three brothers and three sisters older than himself; and the traditional luck of a seventh son has followed him accordingly.
His father was a man of small income, which his interest in public life kept him from increasing. ”