you can on ice skates, and Pa soon found that out, and he began to turn
sideways, and then he threw his arms and walked on his heels, and he lost
his hat, and his eyes began to stick out, cause he was going right towards
an iron post. One arm caught the post and he circled around it a few
times, and then he let go and began to fall, and, sir, he kept falling all
across the room, and everybody got out of the way, except a girl, and Pa
grabbed her by the polonaise, like a drowning man grabs at straws, though
there wasn't any straws in her polonaise as I know of, but Pa just pulled
her along as though she was done up in a shawl-strap, and his
feet went out from under him and he struck on his shoulders and kept a
going, with the girl dragging along like a bundle of clothes. If Pa had
had another pair of roller skates on his shoulders, and castors on his
ears, he couldn't have slid along any better. Pa is a short, big man, and
as he was rolling along on his back, he looked like a sofa with castors on
being pushed across a room by a girl. Finally Pa came to the wall and had
to stop, and the girl fell right across him, with her roller skates in his
neck, and she called him an old brute, and told him if he didn't let go of
her polonaise she would murder him. Just then my chum and me got there and
we amputated Pa from the girl, and lifted him up, and told him for
heaven's sake to let us take off the skates, cause he couldn't skate any
more than a cow, and Pa was mad and said for us to 'let him alone,' and he
could skate all right, and we let go and he struck out again. Well, sir, I
was ashamed. An old man like Pa ought to knonv better than to try to be a
boy. This last time Pa said he was going to spread himself, and if I am
any judge of a big spread, he did spread himself. Some how the skates had
got turned around side-ways on his feet, and his feet got to going in
different directions, and Pa's feet were getting so far apart that I was
afraid I would have two Pa's, half the size, with one leg apiece.

[Illustration: "PA GRABBED HER BY THE POLONAISE."]