Skating has its Little Go, its Great Go, its Baccalaureate, its M.A., its F.S.D., (Doctor of Frantic Skipping,) its A.G.D., (Doctor of Airy Gliding,) its N.T.D., (Doctor of No Tumbles,) and finally its highest degree, U.P. (Unapproachable Podographer).

Wade was U.P.

There were a hundred of Dunderbunkers who had passed their Little Go and could skate forward and backward easily.  A half-hundred, perhaps, were through the Great Go; these could do outer edge freely.  A dozen had taken the Baccalaureate, and were proudly repeating the pirouettes and spread-eagles of that degree.  A few could cross their feet, on the edge, forward and backward, and shift edge on the same foot, and so were Magistri Artis.

Wade, U.P., added to these an indefinite list of combinations and fresh contrivances.  He spun spirals slow, and spirals neck or nothing.  He pivoted on one toe, with the other foot cutting rings, inner and outer edge, forward and back, He skated on one foot better than the M.A.s could on both.  He ran on his toes; he slid on his heels; he cut up shines like a sunbeam on a bender; he swung, light as if he could fly, if he pleased, like a wing-footed Mercury; he glided as if will, not muscle, moved him; he tore about in frenzies; his pivotal leg stood firm, his balance leg flapped like a graceful pinion; he turned somersets; he jumped, whirling backward as he went, over a platoon of boys laid flat on the ice;—­the last boy winced, and thought he was amputated; but Wade flew over, and the boy still holds together as well as most boys.  Besides this, he could write his name, with a flourish at the end, like the rubrica of a Spanish hidalgo.  He could podograph any letter, and multitudes of ingenious curlicues which might pass for the alphabets of the unknown tongues.  He could not tumble.

It was Fine Art.

Bill Tarbox sometimes pressed the champion hard.  But Bill stopped just short of Fine Art, in High Artisanship.

How Dunderbunk cheered this wondrous display!  How delighted the whole population was to believe they possessed the best skater on the North River!  How they struggled to imitate!  How they tumbled, some on their backs, some on their faces, some with dignity like the dying Caesar, some rebelliously like a cat thrown out of a garret, some limp as an ancient acrobate!  How they laughed at themselves and at each other!

“It’s all in the new skates,” says Wade, apologizing for his unapproachable power and finish.

“It’s suthin’ in the man,” says Smith Wheelwright.

“Now chase me, everybody,” said Wade.

And, for a quarter of an hour, he dodged the merry crowd, until at last, breathless, he let himself be touched by pretty Belle Purtett, rosiest of all the Dunderbunk bevy of rosy maidens on the ice.

“He rayther beats Bosting,” says Captain Isaac Ambuster to Smith Wheelwright.  “It’s so cold there that they can skate all the year round; but he beats them, all the same.”