Winter Pastime – A Skating Scene. [more]

We could hardly have produced a more timely picture than is given to the reader above, of that delightfully exhilarating sport, and that truly manly exercise known as skating. Of late years, American ladies have been practicing this amusement, and the fine pond at Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, at certain seasons presents a most lively and gay appearance, covered with ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, all skimming with magic-like power over the glassy surface of the pond. A good skater cane attain immense speed upon the ice, and sustain himself for miles. In the picture above is represented some of the casualties that the skater is liable to. If awkward, he must pay a severe penalty, sometimes, for his want of skill, and fatal accidents do not unfrequently occur. Now beginners, old hands (or legs) at the business, and the awkward squad are all presented in our picture. On the right foreground one is seen with a servant, arranging his skates; just beyond him is an awkward figure, fearful off a fall; in the middle foreground is seen one whose graceful and confident figure betokens the adept at the business; and on his left is observed an individual struggling to break his forward impetus to spare the tow figures already down upon the ice. We trust that the individual underneath has found a soft place on the ice upon which to fall.

Reprinted from Gleason's Pictorial, January 22, 1853.

They wile away the hours in the beach at Narragansett Pier in bewitching bathing costumes pitching clam shells at a mark. [more]

They wile away the hours in the beach at Narragansett Pier in bewitching bathing costumes pitching clam shells at a mark.
The girls at Narragansett Pier have a new game now played on the beach in bathing suit costume. They mark a ring in the sand and stand about twenty feet off and try to throw shells and stones inside the line. Once in a long while a girl gets inside the line and is allowed to rest and watch the others as a reward for her prowess. A poet who observed the game in progress the other morning said it reminded him of that beautiful poem beginning:

Reprinted from The National Police Gazette, 9 Sep 1893.