Rockers And Railroads: The Martin Stixrud Story

Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande Archive

The son of Christian and Martine Stixrud, Martin Stixrud was born on February 9, 1876. He grew up in Oslo's Grønland district, a short distance from the Norwegian capital's downtown area. His father was a mechanic and his mother had him when she was thirty eight years old. His only sibling, a brother named Albert, was two years older.

As was common at the time, the Stixrud brothers lived in their family home well into their twenties, both working as Arsenalarbeiders (Arsenal Workers), manufacturing warheads in a Norwegian arms factory. In their thirties, they both followed in their father's footsteps, taking jobs as mechanics for the Norwegian State Railways. In their free time in the winters, Martin and Albert could be found at the Oslo Skøiteklubb, carving out school figures outdoors in all manner of weather.

Gösta Sandahl, Ivan Malinin and Martin Stixrud at the 1912 European Championships. Photo courtesy Sveriges Centralförening för Idrottens Främjande.

Martin's first appearances in major ISU Championships were nothing to write home about. He placed dead last at the 1910 European Championships and second to last at the 1911 World Championships, both held in Berlin. He took the bronze medal at the 1912 European Championships in Stockholm, but as there were only three entries, he was actually third and last. His first great success really didn't come until 1913, when he bested Andreas Krogh and his brother to win his first of ten Norwegian men's titles. He was thirty seven; his brother thirty nine. Krogh was eighteen.

In retrospect, we may marvel at Martin's age but at the time, it really wasn't uncommon for men over thirty to enter international competitions. What was perhaps moreso remarkable was the fact that early in his career, Martin was a working class man from a working class family who somehow managed to finance trips to competitions all over Europe on modest wages.

One might think that a disastrous eleventh place finish at the 1914 World Championships in Helsinki would have discouraged Martin, but that simply wasn't the case. Both he and his brother Albert were active in competition for the duration of The Great War. At the 1917 Nordic Games, Martin placed a creditable second to a young Gillis Grafström. He went on to win that event in 1919 - his first of three Nordic titles. His free skating performances were typically described moreso as powerful and athletic than elegant. He routinely included the Axel jump in his programs and was a fine spinner.

After The Great War, Martin was promoted to a management position at the Norwegian State Railways. Perhaps owing to the fact that he managed to find off-season ice at the Finse Skøitehallen, a remote indoor rink in the mountains, his skating improved as he got older. He famously claimed the bronze medal at the 1920 Summer Olympic Games in Antwerp, defeating 1908 Olympic Gold Medallist and ten time World Champion Ulrich Salchow. At forty four, he became the oldest man to win an Olympic medal in men's figure skating. Edgar Syers and Geoffrey Hall-Say, who won medals in pairs and special figures at 1908 Olympics, were older by a (gray) hair. Following those Games, Martin competed at two more European Championships and two more World Championships. His best finish was second at the 1923 European Championships, fittingly held in his home city. Two judges (both Norwegian, of course) had him first in free skating at that event.

Retiring from competitive figure skating two years shy of his fiftieth birthday, Martin balanced his work at the Norwegian State Railways with a side gig as a figure skating coach in the thirties. He also served on the board of the Norwegian Skating Federation. His brother Albert was also a skating instructor, and between them they worked with almost every Norwegian skater of any note in the twenties and thirties. Martin's students included Arne Lie, Erna Andersen and Sonja Henie. In her book "Wings On My Feet", Henie (whom he coached for three years) recalled, "I wanted more than anything else to make my free skating program a blend of dancing and figure skating. I wanted it to have the choreographic form of a ballet solo and the technique of the ice. Martin Stixrud helped me with this, suggesting the jumps and spins I should incorporate into the number to show the judges my skill, while I arranged them in a sequence that would have something of the patterned continuity and mood of dancing."

Martin passed away on January 8, 1964 at the age of eighty seven. A short notice of his death in a Norwegian newspaper made no mention of his successes in the figure skating world... yet to date he is still arguably his country's most successful male figure skater ever.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

It's Wirth Reading About Max Wirth

"The most wonderful thing to think about is to fly over the glittering ice on a beautiful evening in the face of the mountains of the Höggaus bathed in the glow of the sun." - Max Wirth, "Die Gartenlaube", 1867

The eldest son of Regina Magdalena (Werner) and Johann Georg August Wirth, Max Wirth was born January 27, 1822 in Wroclaw, Prussia. He had a rather dramatic childhood. Max's father was a well-known lawyer, writer, economist and politician and one of the leaders of the Liberal movement in Southern Germany in the early 1830's. In 1833, his father was sentenced to a two-year prison term in Kaiserslautern for insulting domestic and foreign authorities. Max's mother fled to an Alsatian commune with her children and Max and his brother Franz took up studies at the French Lyceum. After his father was released from prison, he fled to France to join his wife and children. The family later settled in Constance.

Max's father

As a young man, Max returned to Germany to study economics at the University Of Heidelburg. After graduating, Max began working at the stenograph bureau of the German National Assembly after his father's election as a representative for Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg. Just two months into this arrangement, his father passed away of lung disease and Max turned to journalism.

Throughout his life, Max wrote, edited and published for several German newspapers while toiling away at his own writing projects - a series of important economics textbooks. The most famous of his books, "Geschichte der Handelskrisen" (a history of economic crises) went through four editions. He married fellow writer Bettina Greiner, a novelist who later acted as the Viennese correspondent for the "Daily Times" in London.

Max's work as a writer offered him numerous opportunities to travel throughout Europe. His work as a war correspondent during the Second Italian War Of Independence might have been his most perilous assignment, but the time he spent in Austria and Switzerland introduced him to a life-long passion... figure skating.

Photo courtesy Dr. Matthias Hampe

Though he'd first enjoyed 'touring' on skates as a young man at Lake Constance and skated on frozen rivers and lakes throughout Europe for many years, Max was formally introduced to figure skating at the rinks in Bern and Engelberg, Switzerland in the mid-1850's. In 1861, he served on the founding committee of the Frankfurter Schlittschuh-Club with his brother Franz - perhaps Germany's first formal skating club. Dr. Matthias Hampe recalled, "The club was very popular, so that after only a few days, the 'number of members already approached the second hundred'. These paid then an annual contribution of three marks. At appropriate temperatures, the club set up an ice rink... above the old Main Bridge, ensured the visitors' safety from ice break-ins and 'ice rink amenities', organized ice festivities such as torchlight rides, ice races and, above all, sociable tours on the frozen Main." 

Max went on to help organize a public skating society in Bern while working at Switzerland's National Statistics Office. In 1868, he  teamed up with a Stuttgart hardware manufacturer named Albert Stotz to develop three new models of skates - one for pleasure, one for figure and one for speed. These models were based on already existing American styles, using brackets instead of straps to attach them to the boot.

A chance viewing of one of Jackson Haines' performances in Vienna led him to join the Wiener Eislaufverein. Max played a very powerful role in generating interest in figure skating in Vienna in the 1870's and 1880's. At the same time he sat on the executive of the Wiener Eislaufverein and judged and organized its competitions - including The 1882 Great International Skating Tournament - he was the editor of the "Neue Freie Presse", one of the city's leading newspapers.

An avid reader, Max regularly pored over news clippings mentioning figure skating from as far away as Nova Scotia, England, Russia and Norway. He marvelled at George Anderson's accounts of the Glasgow Skating Club and stories telling of new covered artificial rinks in Canada. He also devoted considerable time to researching the early history of skating, dating back to accounts of bone skates being used in Scandinavia and Holland. He uncovered a skate made from a horse bone at the city library in Bern in 1871 and later fashioned over a dozen pairs of skates based on antiquarian illustrations to conduct experiments on the ice. If you read translations of Max's writings on skating, it's clear that he approached the sport with an inquisitive mind and a great affection for all aspects of the art.

Max's daughter Stephanie, who was also a skater at the Wiener Eislaufverein

Max frequently contributed articles regarding the sport and its history to German and Austrian newspapers. In 1881, he joined forces with Demeter Diamantidi and Dr. Carl von Korper von Marienwerth and wrote "Spuren Auf Dem Eise", a book that was considered one of the most important texts in terms of popularizing the Viennese School of figure skating at the time. The book built upon the tradition of Jackson Haines and introduced the school of compulsory figures that was later used by the International Skating Union.

As a sportsman, Max was no slouch either. He was a strong swimmer and back in his university days, he joined the fraternity Corps Rhenania Heidelberg, where he qualified as a master of fencing. He later was one of the founders of the first fencing club in Vienna. As a figure skater, he was credited with introducing the 'doppelspiral' with a change of edge to the Viennese School. In 1867 he remarked, "One of the most beautiful movements, which I learned after many hardships only two years ago, as a result of a friend's question whether the spiral could be wound up again, is the double spiral drawn on one and the same foot. It is actually a spirally elongated S on both sides and is done in the same way, only it requires more effort. At the S, as soon as you draw an arc outward, I want to suppose that you have thrown forward the merely floating foot as far forward as possible. In this way, the force of turning away comes out into the inner arc to complete the S. In the double spiral one cuts first outward, then inwards a snail and in the middle meets the S-Schwenkung. Of course, you can not make a fourfold circle in each of the two spirals without interruption. But a double spiral with two circles outwards and three inwards can be carried out with certainty, and I had complete control of the movement after the practice of a winter." In 1887, he competed in a figure skating competition at the Wiener Eislaufverein and placed an impressive fourth of the nine men who entered. He was sixty five at the time. He skated well into his seventies and his obituary in the "Neue Freie Presse" noted, "He was a sportsman in all circles of the Viennese Society who became known and popular, and on the ice all the young ladies swarmed for the old Worth, the most elegant and chivalrous skater."

Photo courtesy Wiener Eislaufverein

Sadly, in 1900 Max suffered from a fall from a carriage that left him paralyzed. He suffered a fatal stroke on July 18 of that year, passing away at the age of seventy eight, twenty six years before his wife Bettina. Though rightfully better remembered for his efforts as a journalist and economist, the German and Viennese Schools of figure skating likely wouldn't have flourished as they did during his era had he not come around at the right time.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

Tibor von Földváry, The Father Of Hungarian Figure Skating

"Földváry's posture is completely correct and elegant; his school [figures] also meet the [standards of] the most pedantic English and Swedish skating textbooks." - "Vadász- és Versenylap", January 19, 1888

Tibor von Földváry was born July 5, 1863 in Öttevény, a tiny village in Győr-Moson-Sopron, Hungary. As a young man, he studied science in Budapest. He penned the thesis "The Evergreen Plants In Winter Coloration" at the age of twenty. As talented an athlete as he was an academic, he excelled in several sporting pursuits including the high jump but it was his rise to prominence as a figure skater in the latter two decades of the nineteenth century that brought him respect and honour in his home country.

In his youth, Tibor rubbed shoulders with the elite class of Hungary on the ice, regularly skating with Count Béla Széchenyi, the son of famous politician and writer Count István Széchenyi de Sárvár-Felsővidék as well as members of the aristocratic Nádasdy family. 

By the early nineteenth century, Tibor was widely regarded as his country's best figure skater by a mile. The January 11, 1891 issue of the "Vadász-és Verseny-Lap" noted, A few days ago in Vienna, the daughter of a rich industrialist, accompanied by her father and brother came down and unconditionally seized [the audience's attention] with her calmness on ice. However, our own Tibor Földváry absolutely dominated the ice with his elegance... It was beautiful to see." At a competition later that month in Budapest, he defeated János Ehrlich, Adolf Palkovits and Károly Raichl. The "Vadász- és Verseny-Lap"  raved, "Competitors cannot doubt his skill. The movements and exercises he presented eclipsed all others and reaped deserved applause. Földváry is already the best skater in many years." That same winter, he translated a Csárdás dance to the ice which caught the attention of the Viennese skating community.

Pattern for a Csárdás dance adapted for the ice by Tibor Földváry

In 1892, Tibor travelled to Vienna to compete in the second European Figure Skating Championships ever held. He placed an impressive second but the competition could not have been more stacked against him. Number one, he was the only skater not from Germany or Austria participating in a competition Vienna in number and number two... there was only one Hungarian judge versus six Austrian and three German judges on a panel which consisted of an even number of judges.

To add insult to injury, when free skating was included in the European Championships the following year in Berlin, one judge had him first in that phase of the competition but he placed fourth and off the podium behind Engelmann, Henning Grenander and Georg Zachariades. The results of that particular competition were later ruled invalid by the ISU Congress and then reinstated. Undeterred, he returned and won the bronze medal in Vienna in 1894 and won the first international figure skating at Davos the same winter, defeating Fuchs, Zachariades and Germany's Fritz Rehm.

Gilbert Fuchs, Georg Zachariades, Tibor Földváry and Fritz Rehm in Davos in 1894

When the European Championships came to Budapest in 1895, the home ice advantage paid off for the thirty one year old skater. Earning first place ordinals from every judge in figures and from all but one judge in free skating, Tibor soundly defeated Gustav Hügel and Gilbert Fuchs at the Városligeti Műjégpálya, won his first and only European title and promptly retired from the competitive skating world.

Photo courtesy Fortepan

Perhaps inspired by his negative first impression, the young Hungarian set to work to improve the sport. He sat with Robert Holletschek and others on the ISU's first Figure Skating Committee, formed to draft and submit regulations on the governance of the sport. He also judged numerous competitions in Hungary and Vienna as well as several European and World Championships, among them the 1903 World Championships where Ulrich Salchow defeated Nikolay Panin-Kolomenkin in Russia and the first World Championships for women in 1906, won by Madge Syers.

Ulrich Salchow and Tibor von Földváry on the ice in Davos during the 1906 European Championships

Sadly, Tibor passed away on March 27, 1912 in Budapest at the age of forty eight. We may not know his name, but in Hungary he's considered the father of figure skating.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The 1899 European Figure Skating Championships

The public rink in Davos

They broke out against Victorian conventions and danced the march to "Whistling Rufus" by ragtime composer Kerry Mills. In newspapers, they read of Spanish rule ending in Cuba, the man-eating lions of Tsavo and Marie and Pierre Curie's discovery of radium. As the world moved towards the twentieth century, they worried of predictions from spiritualists and the likes of Viennese astronomer Rudolph Falb, who warned that 'the end of the world' was coming... and on January 14 and 15, 1899, they gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the European Figure Skating Championships.

To make it to Davos, skaters could travel via St. Moritz via train or cross the Flüela Pass in Graubünden by sleigh. The Alpine town played host to three ice surfaces: an enormous public rink, the rink constructed by the English solely for English Style skating and a curling rink. English Style skater Edward Frederic Benson later recalled that the valley in Davos was "gloriously free from wind, and extraordinarily healthy with its very dry cold air and abundance of sun." As that year's World Championships were set to be held in the same town less than a month later, several skating aficionados who didn't participate in the Europeans were in attendance, including Great Britain's Edgar Syers.

Ernst Fellner, Edgar Syers and Martin Gordan at the 1899 European Championships

The 1899 European Figure Skating Championships were held as part of a Winter Sports Weekend in conjunction with the European Speed Skating Championships, an ice hockey game between two Swiss teams and several toboggan races. Trondheim's Peder Østlund won the fifteen hundred, five thousand and ten thousand meter races and took the overall speed skating title. He held the world record for the five hundred meter distance but failed to best Jaap Eden's records for the five and ten thousand meters. Østlund was a twenty six year old head of a cycle factory who previously worked as a mechanic. In the toboggan races, a Mr. B. Day won the Simonds Shield and a Miss Turner won the Freeman Trophy.

Peder Østlund

An interesting footnote from this Winter Sports Weekend surrounded one of the speed skating races. According to "Sporting Life" magazine, [W.C.] Edginton, a fen skater representing the Oxford University Skating Club "twice met with a strange accident at Davos. First he fell and put his shoulder out, but sticking gamely to work notwithstanding fortunately fell and put his shoulder back in place, much to the surprise and pleasure of all." Mr. Edginton failed to place in any of the races.

The European Figure Skating Championships drew four competitors from Sweden, Austria and Germany, along with three judges from Switzerland, one judge from Sweden and one from Great Britain. It marked the first time that 1897 World Champion Gustav Hügel and 1898 European Champion Ulrich Salchow competed against each other at the European Championships. In the school figures, two judges had Salchow first, one had Hügel first, one had Austria's Ernst Fellner first and the British judge tied Salchow and Hügel. With Salchow being the only skater with a judge from his country on the panel, the panel would (in theory) have been quite neutral.

The British judge and two of the three Swiss judges tied Salchow and Fellner in free skating. The third Swiss judge had Hügel first and the Swedish judge predictably voted for Salchow. Three judges had Salchow first overall, while one of the Swiss judges voted for Hügel and the British judge for Fellner. The fourth competitor, Germany's Martin Gordan, was marked a distant last on every judge's scorecard both in free skating and overall. In winning his second European title, Ulrich Salchow defeated Gustav Hügel for the first time in his career. They'd go on to compete against each other four more times. Hügel won three of those events.

An account of the Championships from the "Deutsches Volksblatt" stated, "The opinions in the audience about the order of finish was very divided. Salchow, the winner, skates all the figures big and his turns are amazing. Unfortunately, the positions are a bit ungraceful. In the free skating he produced the Engelmann star magnificently, followed by a jump that was a bit dull... Hügel was not as steady in the school figures as Salchow was but in [the free skating] he had the audience to thank for the stormy applause. There is nothing good to report about Fellner. His three week training in Davos was downright scandalous. We only noticed the bent stance that he always had. He was more graceful in the [free skating] than Salchow but he also had a very simple program with many poses. Too bad that the lovely pair of Bohatsch siblings from the Wiener Eislaufverein did not skate. They would have been victorious we are sure." An engrossing point from this Austrian newspaper account was how Salchow's namesake jump was referred to as "a bit dull". When Axel Paulsen performed his own jump at the 1882 Great International Skating Tournament the reception was equally chilly. While it's what skaters do in the air that counts today, back in 1899 the figures they carved on the ice were paramount and jumps were still considered quite gauche by some.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

On The Blue Danube: The Idi Papez and Karl Zwack Story

"It was a wonderful time. I wouldn't have wanted to miss it." - Idi Papez, "San Francisco Examiner", August 28, 1966

Ida 'Idi' Papez and Karl Zwack were born in Vienna, Austria three years apart - he on September 11, 1906 and she on February 7, 1909. Their upbringings couldn't have been any more different. Idi grew up in a middle class Roman Catholic family, while Karl came from a wealthy Jewish family that emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Austria. He grew up in Leopoldstadt, a predominantly Jewish suburb of Vienna. One of his ancestors was Dr. József Zwack, the Royal Physician to the Habsburg Court, who had invented an alcoholic health tonic that the royalty and nobles were all wild over. Genealogist Roy Grant noted, "The Zwack's prospered and their families followed the social scene by migrating to nearby capital cities. One side went into banking and moved to Vienna, another stayed with producing the tonic on a commercial basis and settled in Budapest. Either way, from then on the Zwack's and their descendants were always comfortably off."

Idi and Karl were playmates as children and started skating together as youngsters at a neighbourhood rink when she was six and he was nine. They didn't begin pursuing competitive skating seriously until they were in their late teens, their first big win being the Austrian junior pairs title in Innsbruck in 1929. After finishing second to Lilly (Scholz) Gaillard and Willy Petter in the senior pairs event at the Austrian Championships in 1930, they made their debut at the European Championships, placing a creditable fifth. That same year, they placed second at an international competition in Opava behind Olga Philipovits and Rudolf Dillinger.

Karl Schäfer, Idi Papez and Karl Zwack

In 1931, Idi and Karl again finished second at the Austrian Championships but managed to claim the bronze medal at the World Championships in Berlin ahead of Gaillard and Petter and Americans Maribel Vinson and George ''Geddy' Hill. The following year, they won their first of three Austrian titles and claimed their first medal at the European Championships, also a bronze.

Photo courtesy National Archives Of Poland

Arguably, Idi and Karl's greatest success was their win over Gaillard and Petter at the 1933 European Championships in London. In the years that followed, they disappointingly finished second at two European and two World Championships. All but one of those losses was by the narrowest of margins. Two were three/two splits of the judging panel and at the 1933 World Championships, they also lost by a mere tenth of a point. Hungarians Emília Rotter and László Szollás won three of those four titles; the 1935 European title win going to Germans Maxi Herber and Ernst Baier.

Karl Zwack, Ernst Baier, Idi Papez, Vivi-Anne Hultén and Maxi Herber. Photo courtesy Wiener Eislaufverein.

As one might predict, the Austrian press more than once stated Idi and Karl were underscored and received "the widest applause". It was an injury - not the frustration over finishing second time after time - that ended Idi and Karl's competitive career. Idi broke her arm in the months leading up to the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and another talented Austrian team, Ilse and Erich Pausin, won the silver medal that by all intents and purposes should have been theirs.

At only five foot six, Karl wasn't the typical 'pair guy', even for that era. Yet he and Idi developed a reputation from Paris to Prague as one of the more athletic couples of the period. Idi once told an American reporter, "We invented adagio on ice, were the first to put acrobats on ice, created a great controversy in Europe as newspapers demanded, 'Is that dance skating or circus?'" While Idi's claim wasn't exactly true - there were a number of professional pairs who had performed adagio lifts earlier - she and Karl were certainly one of a handful of pairs who played an important role in making amateur pairs skating more athletic in the thirties. They showcased their 'big tricks' in exhibitions in Austria, Germany, Holland, France, Great Britain, Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Idi Papez, Karl Zwack, Vivi-Anne Hultén, Maxi Herber and Ernst Baier in America in 1935. Photos courtesy Fulton History, Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University.

From 1935 to 1937, Idi and Karl made three trips to the United States to appear in carnivals at Madison Square Garden and the Chicago Stadium. While abroad, they sent postcards and letters to the "Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung" detailing their American adventures. Neither Idi or Karl knew any English at this point and relied heavily on English-German dictionaries, so Ernst Baier and Vivi-Anne Hultén acted as interpreters for the group of European skaters who participated. The first of these trips resulted in a minor scandal, when the British delegates to the ISU alleged that Idi and Karl, Maxi Herbert and Ernst Baier, Vivi-Anne Hultén and Sonja Henie had violated 'Rule 3, Section 2' of the ISU rulebook, which stated "that no visiting skater may receive more than second-class fares and incidental expenses not exceeding 20 Swedish kroner." At the ISU Congress in Stockholm, the powers that be dismissed the charges.

On their final trip to America, Idi and Karl met the Shipstad brothers, who were busy organizing their brand new tour - the Ice Follies. Idi recalled, "We had hardly returned home and unpacked when they sent us a wire asking us to join the show. We decided to accept." Skiing champion Sepp Ruschp remembered meeting Idi and Karl on an express train through Hamburg, when they were enroute to America: "I went to the first class car (I was travelling third class) and was introduced to the two skaters - beautiful girl and young man. We quickly became friends, and spent much of the train ride chatting. Because we were three nationally known sport figures, we were allowed to travel together. I got out and walked when the train stopped at Regensburg and other cities, but I noticed they never left their car. Finally I went back in and asked, 'Don't you want some fresh air?' 'My dear friend,' Karl said, 'I'm Jewish. Ida is not but I am and I'm scared stiff. I won't take one step out there until I am on my way to the boat.' He said he would feel more at ease once the boat departed."

Idi and Karl arrived in America safely and toured with the Ice Follies throughout World War II. They were the first European skaters to join the show. Idi recalled, "I remember our first visit to San Francisco. We were all so excited, and so were the people here. Some came to see that first show five or six times." Impressed by her legs, one reporter dubbed Idi "The Marlene Dietrich Of The Ice". Their theatrical number "The Moth And The Flame", where she wore wings, was a big hit with American audiences and they were lauded for their 'Old World charm' in their signature number to Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz.

Though their smiles never gave it away to the audiences in the Ice Follies, life off the ice for Idi and Karl wasn't all roses. Prior to leaving for America, Idi had married Adolf Eder, then Secretary of the Wiener Eislaufverein. The plan was for her to go America "to smooth the way for Karl's possible escape." The couple ultimately divorced and Adolf went on to serve as Secretary of the Österreicher Eislaufverband from 1947 to 1958 and manager of the Karl Schäfer and Wiener Eisrevues. Idi remarried to San Francisco's Gordon Horatio Chick, owner of Chick's Bootery, on April 24, 1945. Karl had married a New Yorker named Gertrude Goldie Milstein who moved with her family to Vienna in June of 1934. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in the summer of 1939. Along with countless other Jewish people living in Vienna, Karl's parents were rounded up by the Nazis. They were both sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezín, northwest of Prague - a transit station on the way to the extermination camps. His mother Olga didn't survive Theresienstadt; his father Gustav didn't survive the final leg of his journey - the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Left photo courtesy Wiener Eislaufverein

Retiring from the Ice Follies in 1945, Idi and Karl both stepped away from the skating world. Karl settled in New York and raised a family and Idi lived out her days in a two million dollar home in Twin Peaks, San Francisco with her husband and chihuahua Brunnhilde. In 1966, Idi told a reporter from the "San Francisco Examiner", "I haven't skated since I was married. I always thought: when you quit, you quit. You can't hang on to something." Karl passed away in August of 1984 at the age of seventy seven; Idi on October 12, 1997 at the age of eighty eight. 

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The Tales Of Two Austrians

In today's blog, we'll dust off the history books and meet two Austrian figure skaters who made important - and completely overlooked - contributions to the sport in the first half of the twentieth century. 

GISELA REICHMANN

Gisela 'Gisa' (Reichmann) Kadrnka was one of the most talented female skaters at the Wiener Eislaufverein in the years leading up to The Great War, her first major performance was at the grand opening of Vienna's newest ice rink in 1912 alongside World Medallists Helene Engelmann and Karl Mejstrik, Christa Szabó and Ernst Oppacher.

The following winter, Gisa finished second to Paula Zalaudek in an international competition held in Vienna and won the first Austrian women's title. In 1914, she defeated club mate Angela Hanka at a competition at the Wiener Eislaufverein and was selected to compete at the 1914 World Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where Austrian judge Eduard Engelmann, Jr. had her third but she ended up fifth. Though her international competitive career was limited to events held in Austria during the War, she regularly participated in skating exhibitions with Hanka, Engelmann, Oppacher and others, which lifted the spirits of the Viennese people during troublesome times.

In early 1917, the Austrian Championships for women were delayed three times due to weather. They were finally held on February 17, 1917 and Gisa was again victorious, defeating Herma Szabó. The March 1, 1918 issue of the "Illustriertes Österreichisches Sportblatt" declared that in winning she delivered a "fantastic, harmonized overall performance" in the school figures and "an extremely rich program at a brisk tempo" in the free skating. The following month, Vienna hosted an international competition for skaters from Germany and Austria. Reichmann again won the women's senior class, defeating Paula Zalaudek of Austria and Thea Frenssen and Margarete Klebe of the Berliner Schlittschuhclub.

Gisa's competitor Thea Frenssen

The March 2, 1917 issue of the "Illustriertes Österreichisches Sportblatt" boasted that "Fraulein Reichmann appeared again [in the] full height of her excellent form" and that the German skaters "placed emphasis on beautiful posture, but unfortunately often... technical difficulties appeared." Gisa repeated as Austrian Champion in 1918 but her margin of victory was extremely slim.

Gisa competing at the 1919 Austrian Figure Skating Championships

In February 1919, Gisa lost the Austrian title to Szabó by six points but was over fifty points ahead of the third place finisher, Grete Bresnik of the Cottage Eislauf-Verein. By 1922, she simply wasn't able to defeat Szabó, no matter how hard she tried. Despite winning the international women's class in The Meeting Of Skating Clubs at the German Winter Sports Week in Garmisch-Partenkirchen over Zalaudek and Ilse Adametz in 1922 and the figure skating competition at Vienna's Winter Sports Week over skaters from Troppau and Budapest in 1923, it was clear that the Austrian judges favoured Szabó as Austria's number one female skater.

Gisa, Grete Bresnik and Herma Szabó

At the 1923 World Championships in Vienna, four of the five judges placed Gisa second behind Szabó, with the exception of the Swedish judge who placed her behind his country's entry, Olympic and World Medallist Svea Norén. After finishing off the podium in fourth the following year at the World Championships in Oslo, the "Tagblatt" suggested she'd do better to remember past glories and pack it up. In hindsight, it was quite the suggestion for a skater who beat a young Sonja Henie... in Norway.

Gisa skating in Yugoslavia with Stanko Bloudek, Viktor Vodišek and Franz Avčin

For a time, it appeared Gisa had moved on from the skating world. She married a doctor, moved to Zagreb and joined the HAŠK. She staged a comeback of sorts in 1928, returning to Vienna for several weeks to train before entering an international competition in St. Moritz, where she beat her Swiss opponent. Incredibly, the following year she became the first women's figure skating champion of a second country at the 1929 Yugoslavian Championships held in Ljubljana. On February 4, 1929, the Slovenian press wrote, "Competitions were held in severe cold (-11C Saturday, Sunday -23C) and the ice was too hard. In the women's competition, Mrs. Reichmann-Kadrnka was the only competitor... Out of a possible 216 points (132 for [school figures], and 84 for the free skating) she won 203 points (121 for [school figures] and 82 for the free skating. The lady has performed compulsory figures and free skating at a high international level, and has thus aroused the greatest attention of the viewers... Although [school figures were] skated almost flawlessly, even better was the free skating where the heavy elements and many pirouettes fascinated viewers. Also, her skating was a wonderful fit in this beautiful event."

After winning the first Austrian and Yugoslavian women's titles and defeating two future Olympic Gold Medallists during her illustrious skating career, Gisa Kadrnka fell completely off the radar. The fact she was Jewish and that the Central Database of Shoah Victims Names lists no less than eight Giza, Gizela or Gizella Reichmann's killed during the Holocaust is certainly alarming. Whatever her fate, the fact that her story has been relegated as a dusty footnote in figure skating history is yet another injustice.

HERMANN STEINSCHADEN

Hermann Steinschaden was born January 12, 1906 in Maxglan, a community on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria. He grew up in the Bavarian town of Füssen and placed dead last in his only trip to the Austrian Championships in 1931. Travel manifests prove that he ventured all over the place in the thirties. He spent two year's teaching at the Queen's Ice Club, three months at the Sydney Glaciarium in Australia in 1935 and was in the United States in 1936. Newspaper accounts also note that he performed in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, leaping chairs, barrels and jumping through paper hoops on stilt skates.

In 1937, Hermann appeared in the famous ice revue in "St. Moritz" at the London Coliseum and choreographed an ice revue called "The Viennese Doll" with Miss Gladys Hogg. The year prior at the Westminster Ice Club's Galaxy Gala in 1936, he appeared in what was perhaps the first on-ice interpretation of Bram Stoker's book "Dracula". The March 4, 1936 issue of "The Tatler" reported, "The eerie green light made the colossal figure of the black bat - Herr Hermann Steinschaden on stilts - seem very sinister, while his victim was left in a pool of blood." In other acts, he dressed as Mercury and Hermes, wearing red and gold bodysuits. His stilt skating act was copied - with gold body paint replacing the bodysuit - by Red McCarthy, Phil Taylor and others.

Less than a ten days before World War II broke out, Hermann appeared in an ice gala at Streatham with Freddie Tomlins... and that's where things get a little confusing. While newspaper accounts show that he continued to give exhibitions in England and Scotland as late as 1940, there's also evidence that, like many Germans and Austrians living in England at the start of World War II, he was interned for a time but was released to teach skating at the Westminster Ice Rink. Records show that he became a naturalized British citizen in May of 1940 and married Gabriel 'Gay' Abbott Silver in 1941 at Hendon, Middlesex. He passed away in October of 1991 in Surrey at the age of eighty five.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering a copy of the figure skating reference books "The Almanac of Canadian Figure Skating", "Technical Merit: A History of Figure Skating Jumps" and "A Bibliography of Figure Skating": https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html.

The Eighth Annual Skate Guard Hallowe'en Spooktacular

It's that ghost wonderful time of the year when ghouls and goblins take center stage... and center ice. For this year's Skate Guard Hallowe'en Spoooktacular, we're going all the way back to 1868 with an unattributed piece that first appeared in the Christmas issue of "Chambers's Journal". Dim the lights, light a candle and prepare to be spooked by an eerie Victorian era skating thriller called "The Night-Summons".

"THE NIGHT-SUMMONS" (UNATTRIBUTED)

I could never quite make up my mind to like Captain Standril. He was only Lieutenant Standril when he first came to Buckholme, and let my sister Alice see how deeply he was in love with her. He was very good-looking and very accomplished; and in the eyes of Alice and mamma, he was simply perfection. Any opposition that I, a raw school-girl of fifteen, might have felt inclined to offer my sister's engagement would have been worse than useless; it would only have sown discord where love the most complete had heretofore reigned, and would not have influenced Alice's after-fate in the least. So the wedding-day came and went, and took our dear one with it. Mamma and I were left in the old house alone; and Buckholme had never seemed so desolate to either of us as it did now that Alice's pleasant laugh was no longer heard in its rooms.

About six months after Lieutenant Standril's marriage, his regiment was ordered to Ireland; and then Alice would have been lost to us entirely but for the letters that passed to and fro between Buckholme and the little town where she was in quarters with her husband.

My sister had been gone about a couple of years, when that terrible affair of the bank-failure took place. Mamma lost two-thirds of her entire fortune in the crash, and my little portion went the same way.

As a consequence of this calamity, we were obliged to quit Buckholme, the spot where Alice and I had been born and brought up, and close to which was the churchyard where our father lay buried. Mamma could no longer afford to keep up so large an establishment. We were even obliged to leave dear old Scotland; and, to my girlish fancy, crossing the border was like going into a foreign country. Mamma had a little house, her own property, in one of the northern counties of England, and that was to be our future home. After Buckholme, it was a mere cottage; and for several weeks after our arrival, we seemed to have scarcely breathing-room in it. But that feeling of narrowness and want of space quickly wore itself away, and we came to look upon the little house emphatically as home, and as such, we grew to love it. It was pleasantly situated on an upland sweep of rich pasture-land. From its windows, you looked across a wide expanse of undulating valley to the foremost spurs of a range of great hills that stretched northward - one giant pressing close on the shoulders of another almost to the Border itself - and formed no bad substitute for the more rugged grandeurs of my native land. Our tiny demesne was shut in on one side by the sluggish waters of a canal. This canal was a great eyesore to mamma, who always spoke of it as 'that ditch'; but for my part, I did not dislike it. The slow-trailing barges, laden with coal or merchandise, and the gay packet-boats that passed our windows twice a day - one up and one down - lent a touch of human interest to the landscape, and were of service to us in drawing our thoughts for a little while from ourselves and our immediate troubles.

Alice had been gone about three years. Of late, her letters had been very infrequent, and those that we did receive were confined to details of the meagrest kind. They breathed no syllable of complaint, yet there was always a troubled look in my mother's eyes for a day or two after she had received one of them. In the last letter sent us by Alice, there was no hint of what came to pass such a short time afterwards; consequently, our surprise was all the greater when, in the dusk of a certain summer evening, a fly stopped at our garden-wicket, and the next moment I clasped my sister to my heart.

It was only natural, after the first glad surprise of the meeting was over, that both mamma and I should want to know how it happened that Alice had come back so unexpectedly, and without a single word of announcement. But my sister stopped us at the outset.

"Captain Standril's regiment is ordered to Canada," she said, "and he will accompany it. I decline going to Canada; consequently, I am come back home. I have nothing further to tell you; and if you love me, you will not ask me a single question more."

And nothing further did she tell us. We were too happy to have her with us to question her against her will as to her reasons for returning.

During the six months that followed between the night of her return and the strange incident which I have now to record, Alice received but two letters from her husband. Whether the news they contained was good or bad, no one ever knew but herself. All she said was, that Captain Standril was quite well, and desired his regards to mamma and me; but she seemed even more melancholy after the receipt of them than she had been before, although not faintest murmur or complaint of any kind escaped her lips. Both mamma and I were anxious on the score of her health, which seemed to wane with the waning year; the listless, brooding sadness that was upon her deepened from month to month, and the doctor's visits grew more frequent as Christmas drew near. But Alice's illness was of the heart, and all the tonics in the world would have availed her but little.

That winter was the hardest that had been known south of the Border for years; but I had been used to hard winters all my life. The black frost, which set in about the middle of December, promised before long to afford me an opportunity of indulging in my favourite pastime of skating, which, on leaving Buckholme, I had given up as a lost pleasure - as a something which I could hope but rarely to enjoy again. Every morning when I awoke, my first glance was to the window of my room, to see whether a filigree of frost-work still obscured the panes; and morning after morning, the dainty tracery was there again, telling me that the frost had not yet been broken.

When the frost had lasted four days, I sent Simon, our solitary man-servant, who was coachman, butler and gardener in one, to make a secret reconnaissance, and report privately to me as to character and capabilities of the ice.

"It'll bear all right by tomorrow, Miss Theo, will t'ice," was Simon's report.

Next morning, I imparted my project mamma; but she would not listen to it till two days later, when my importunities induced her to yield a reluctant consent. I must go alone, or not at all, but I did not mind that. I had spent many a solitary hour skating on the great loch near Buckholme, with no company but my own thoughts. So Simon went down with me to the edge of the canal, and put on my skates for me, and then I started. I had a glorious three hours on the ice; and got back home all aglow, just as the sun was dipping into the gray mists of a dying afternoon.

A week passed, and still the frost held without the slightest sign of a break. Every day I went on to the ice for a longer or shorter time; and mamma was quite as anxious now - being well assured that the ice could not give way - that I should enjoy this healthful exercise while I had an opportunity of doing so, as I was to second her wishes in the matter. Dear mamma! She was afraid that Alice's melancholy would infect my spirits it I stayed too much indoors; that I should catch the trick of sadness, without having its warranty.

On the morning of Christmas-eve, there came a third letter from Canada, addressed to my sister. We were all sitting at breakfast when it was brought in, for, this morning, Alice seemed better than usual, and had come down quite unexpectedly. She opened the letter with hands that trembled slightly. As her eyes took in the contents, a deep angry flush mounted to her white face. Next minute she arose, looking beautifully indignant, and crossing the floor, thrust her husband's letter between the bars of the grate, and did not turn away her gaze till it was burned to ashes. She then crossed the room to leave it. She was going back to the solitude of her own little chamber upstairs.

"Is Robert quite well, dear?" asked mamma anxiously as Alice's hand was on the door.

"Captain Standril is quite well," she answered coldly, and next moment she was gone.

Later in the day, I went out on the ice as usual, but the edge of my enjoyment was taken off by my sister's evident trouble. If only she would have made a confidant of mamma, and have told her everything, I felt convinced that half the sting would have been taken out of her trouble. But she nursed it in solitude, brooding over it in lonely misery, and by her obstinate silence, making all three of us far more wretched than we need have been, had not her lips been sealed by mistaken pride.

I was met by mamma on entering the house. "Alice is much worse this afternoon," she said. "The letter she received this morning seems to have given a shock to her nervous system which has utterly prostrated her. I would send for Dr. Webb, but that she is so obstinately bent on not seeing him after his visit of yesterday; and when she sets her mind either for or against anything, you know how determined she can be."

"Has she said anything to you respecting the contents of the letter?"

"Not a word."

As the evening advanced, Alice seemed somewhat better, but still very silent and depressed; and altogether it was the most wretched Christmas-eve I had ever known. I was glad when bedtime came. After I had put out my light, I stood peering out of the window for a few moments. A slight snow-shower had fallen a few hours before, but the clouds had rolled themselves away by this time, and the wide landscape, white and solemn, lay bathed in clearest moonlight. What a pity it seemed, I thought, to waste in sleep hours that could claim so much beauty as their own.

I was fast enough asleep, however, when mamma came into my room, about two o'clock, and touched me on the shoulder. "I want you to get up, dear," she said. "Alice is much worse, and I am becoming very anxious about her."

Mamma's anxiety was at once shared by me when I entered my sister's room. That she was very dangerously ill was quite evident even to my inexperienced eyes. "Dr. Webb must be summoned at once," said mamma, "but whom can we send to fetch him?"

Dr. Webb lived at Dale-end, a little town five miles away. So solitary was the position of our house, that he was the nearest practitioner. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been no difficulty in summoning him. Old Simon would have got out Ball the pony, and have driven over to Dale-end with the basket-carriage, and have brought the doctor back with him. But to-night it so happened that neither Simon nor the pony was available. The former had gone to spend Christmas with some friends several miles away; and Ball, a few days previously, had fallen lame, and was for the present utterly useless. Beside mamma and myself, there remained in the house only two maid-servants, who would rather have forfeited their situations than have walked five miles along a lonely country road at that uncanny hour.

"I will go and summon Dr. Webb," I said in answer to mamma's question.

"But, Theo, you can never walk five miles at this time of the night."

"I both can and will do it. Dr. Webb will bring me back in his gig."

"It will never do for you to go alone. Bessy the housemaid must accompany you."

"She would only be an encumbrance, and I am not at all afraid. I should get along twice as well without her. You know my walking powers of old."

"I must really insist, Theo, upon Bessy going with you. Otherwise I shall go to Dale-end myself."

I should probably have carried my point in the end, but just then a sudden thought struck me, which left me for the moment powerless to speak, and mamma at once went to call Bessy.

Five minutes later, Bessy and I were ready to start. Mamma let us out at the front-door, and bade us God-speed, and stood watching us till we shut the garden wicket behind us and were lost to view. Moon and stars were shining brightly, and all the country-side lay white before us. The snow was not thick enough to impede walking; it just served to deaden the noise of our footsteps on the hard ground. There was a keen frosty wind that smote us like a scourge when we got out of the sheltered lane, and turned our faces northward.

"Beg your pardon, Miss Theo, but you are taking the wrong turn," said Bessy. "We shall never get to Dale-end this way."

"Yes we shall, Bessy; or rather I shall. There will be no need for you to go."

"But Mrs. Saltoun said I was to go with you, Miss Theo; and anyhow, this is not the road."

"Let me enlighten you; I am going to skate there along the canal."

"Law! Miss, you will never be so foolish!" exclaimed Bessy, utterly aghast at the idea. "Whatever will your mamma say?"

"Mamma has had to forgive me so many worse things than that. I shall reach Dale-end in half the time it would take me to go by road, and Dr. Webb will be able to see my sister so much the sooner. I want you to go down to the canal with me, and assist me on with my skates. After that, you can go back home, and tell mamma what I have done."

Bessy grumbled, but was obliged to give way. I sat down on a large stone by the canal side, and she assisted me to fasten on my skates. My dress was well looped up, and so as not to impede my movements; my hands were protected by a tiny muff; last of all, Bessy tied a handkerchief over my hat; and under my chin. Then I started. Good-hearted Bessy stood on the bank, and waved me a tearful farewell, as though I were going on a voyage of a thousand miles.

The ice was in splendid condition. The keen wind that had sprung up since midnight had swept the powdered snow off its surface almost as well as a broom could have done. To find myself on the ice by night was to remind me of old happy hours in Scotland, when we used to go out, a great party of us, with torches and bagpipes, and skate on Buckholme Loch. I nerved myself to do the distance at racing speed. It was six miles, a mile further than by road. When the black span of the first bridge was touched and past, and Bessy left a quarter of a mile behind, the overpowering solitude of the scene began to weigh upon my heart. But the condition was of itself enough to make me feel sad and anxious. It could not surely be that we were going to lose her? And yet there was something in her appearance to-night that excited my worst fears. In my own mind, I could not help connecting my sister's increased illness with the letter from her husband which she had received that morning while at breakfast. If that hateful Captain Standril had never come back to Buckholme, Alice would not have left us, and all the after-misery of her life resulting from her marriage with that man would have been spared her.

Such was the precise nature of the thought in my mind, at the moment that a faint sound struck on my ear, and caused me to turn my head. I was quite disagreeably startled to find that I was quite so entirely alone on the ice as I had imagined myself to be. There was some one behind me: a man. "Some belated skater, no doubt," said I to myself, "who has been detained by good cheer and good company, and is now making the best of his way home."

Without feeling exactly frightened, I was yet rather anxious and timid, and at once put on my speed to the utmost, with the view of distancing the stranger behind me. But I quickly perceived that the attempt was a futile one. My pursuer - for such, although I had no reason whatever for so doing, I could not help calling him in my own mind - was rapidly lessening the distance between us. The ring of his skates was plain enough now to my ear, above the noise made by my own. Suddenly, I decided to slacken my speed, so as to let this troublesome individual shoot ahead of me, since that seemed the only way to get rid of him. It was not without a quickened beating of the heart that I put this plan into operation, and reduced my speed by one-third. The stranger now came up 'hand over hand'. "He will reach me at the bridge," said I to myself, calculating the distance with my eye. So it was. As we shot until the bridge, he was skating in my shadow; as we shot out on the other side, he and I were abreast. I kept my eyes fixed straight before me, and skated on, but still at a reduced speed. I was momently expecting to see the stranger glide on in front of me, leaving me to pursue my journey alone. But he did nothing of the kind. We had left the bridge three hundred yards behind, and he was still skating in an exact line with me. My indignation was rapidly overcoming my timidity. "A piece of warrantable impertinence, to intrude his company on me in this way!" I said to myself. With that I turned to fix him with a haughty stare; perhaps to question him, and saw - whom?

"Captain Standril!"

My first feeling was on of utter surprise at finding by my side a person whom I had at that moment believed to be some thousands of miles away. But this feeling quickly merged itself, and was lost in one that was far more unpleasant - in one of sheer horror. In the first moment of my surprise at seeing Captain Standril, I pronounced his name, and was about to add some simple question, but a second glace at him caused the words to die away in my throat. As well as I could make out, he was dressed entirely in furs. On his head, he wore a close-fitting cap, made of the skin of some animal, from which his pale sharp-cut features and shapely moustache stood out clear and distinct in the moonlight. Yes, his face was very pale. It was more than pale; it was white - a dull death-like green white in the light of the moon - the face of a corpse! My soul itself seemed to shudder with a dread ineffable, as the conviction forced itself upon my mind that I was in the company of a dead man. He was looking straight before him at the moment I pronounced his name, and he took no apparent notice of my ejaculation. We were still gliding swiftly forward on our shoes of steel - I almost mechanically; we were still in a line one with the other, with a space of five or six feet between us; we had progressed about half a mile from the spot were Captain Standril had come up with me, when he slowly turned his head, and bent his eyes upon mine - terrible eyes, with nothing of earthy speculation left in them, but in its place a nameless indescribable something, lighting them up with a strange inward light of their own, so that their expression was as clear to me as if I had seen them by the broad light of day. The horror that was upon me deepened till it was almost unbearable. Earth and sky, moonlight and starlight, and the shining icy floor which my feet were devouring so swiftly, all passed out of my cognizance as unconsciously as a dream fades out of the brain at the moment of waking. We seemed to be skating, my dread companion and I, over a sea of glass towards a precipice that could only be discerned dimly in the distance, and over which, having no power to stop ourselves, we must inevitably go headlong to destruction.

As in dreams we have no real knowledge of the duration of time, so, in the state in which I then was, I seemed to have passed hours in skating over the sea of glass, whereas it could only have been half a minute at the most before I came back to a recognition of time and place, and the real circumstances around me; and felt rather than saw, with a throb of unspeakable relief, that my companion's baleful eyes were no longer fixed upon me. In the mere fact of his presence, there was something sufficiently terrible; but had he kept his eyes on me much longer, I must either have died or gone mad.

There was something appalling in my companion's utter silence. I became possessed by an almost irresistible desire to challenge him, to question him, to do anything that would cause him to speak; and yet in my secret I was intensely thankful that he did not speak: it was a contradiction that I am unable to explain. Had he spoken to me, I should have never summoned up courage to answer again. Nothing, indeed, save the strong consciousness working within me that the errand on which I was bound must be accomplished at every risk, gave me the strength needful to accomplish my purpose. Had I been supported by a sense of any duty less stern and exacting, that support would have been in vain; I should infallibly have broken down; I should have shrieked aloud for help, though no one could have heard me; I should have turned and fled by the way I had come; or else I should have fallen senseless on the ice, and have been found next morning, frozen and dead. As it was, I drew my breath hard, and set my teeth, and murmured to myself: "Not twenty Captain Standrils, dead or alive, shall stop me from going where I want to go."

I increased my pace, and Captain Standril increased his. Onward we sped along a winding course that followed every bend and twist of the little valley, the white meadows, solitary and far-reaching, sweeping down on either side of our icy road without a sign of human life or habitation. The little town for which I was bound lay in a fold of the valley, and could not be seen from the canal till you were close upon it. My heart began to beat more freely at the thought that now the end of my journey was not far away. About a mile before you reach the town, the canal divides itself into two branches, which, after forming a loop (for purposes of trade), come together again in the large basin at the terminus. Each of these channels would have answered my purpose equally well, there being little or no difference in their length; but I had made up my own mind to take that which led to the right. When we were about a dozen yards from the point of division, the dark and speechless figure by my side shot suddenly ahead in the direction of the left hand channel. I now saw, what I had not noticed before, that my weird companion was shadowless! The noise made my his skates cutting the ice could be distinctly heard above that made by mine; in bulk and figure he seemed as other men; his person intercepted the light, and was apparently as palpable to the touch as my own: yet despite all this, as he shot forward in the brilliant moonlight, not the slightest shadow was cast by his figure on the ice. I saw, and thrilled from head to foot as I saw. At the entrance to the left-hand channel, my companion paused in his career, turned his head slowly, and beckoned me to follow him. As though impelled by some fatal fascination with the course I had determined on in my own mind, my feet, without any apparent volition of my own, turned off to the left, as if in obedience to my ghostly summons. Another instant, and I should have been close on his track, when suddenly I heard my sister's voice, as clear as distinct as ever I heard it in my life, say close to my ear: "Follow him not!" With a half-smothered shriek, I swept swiftly round, and next moment I was racing at a headlong speed down the channel to the right.

I thought I had got rid of my ghostly pursuer. My eyes went stealthily round, and could see no signs of him. But a couple of minutes later, as I emerged from the shadow of a bridge, he was by my side again. But every minute now my nerves were gaining in steadiness, for the end of my journey was night. Presently, we shot into the great basin of the canal, the roofs of Dale-end were before me, and my heart gave utterance to a brief silent thanksgiving for my safe arrival. I sat down on the wharf steps to take off my skates. My dread companion had vanished; I was alone.

As I hurried up the narrow tortuous streets of the little town, I seemed to be conscious of a vague shadowy presence haunting my footsteps; but whenever I turned my head there was nothing to be seen. This impalpable something followed me close up to the doctor's door, but was gone utterly the moment I laid my hand on the bell. The good doctor was quickly down in answer to my summons. "O Dr. Webb - my sister!" was all I could say, and then I fell insensible at his feet.

When I recovered my senses, I found Mrs. Webb at my side, whom her husband had fetched out of her bed to attend to her. There, too, was the doctor himself, ready prepared for the journey.

"You had better stay here for the rest of the night, my dear Miss Saltoun," said the doctor, "or else I may have two patients on my hands instead of one."

"I am quite well now; and I must get back home," I replied; nor could all the well-meant efforts of the kind-hearted couple persuade me to the contrary. Five minutes later, well wrapped up in some extra shawls and rugs, I was seated beside the doctor in his gig, on my way home. As we were going along, I narrated to Dr. Webb the details of my strange journey on the ice. He answered me, as I quite expected he would do - that my nervous system was out of order; that the delicate mechanism of the brain was slightly disarranged; that my mind had been dwelling too much on Captain Standril and the letter written by him; and that when the mental health was affected in a certain way, nothing was more simple than to mistake a spectral illusion for a creature of flesh and blood. Finally, it was Dr. Webb's opinion that what I wanted most was tone; and he would write me out a prescription in the morning which would put all ghostly fancies to flight for the future.

"What you say may be quite correct," I replied; "nevertheless, I am perfectly convinced that Captain Standril is dead, and that he died within a few hours of the present time, as I am that I am sitting here and speaking with you. All I ask of you, that you will put down the exact day and hour in your pocket-book, and leave the event to prove whether I am right or wrong."

"Agreed," he said. "There can be no harm in doing that. You will not, I presume, say a word either to Mrs. Saltoun or your sister respecting what you have just told me?"

"Certainly not. It will be time enough for them to know when the news shall come."

"The news will never come, my dear Miss Saltoun, take my word for it."

We found my sister no worse than when I had left home. Dr. Webb stayed with us till breakfast-time. Before taking his leave, he showed me the memorandum which he made in his pocket-book.

A fortnight later, came the news of Captain Standril's death. He had been out skating on Christmas-eve with a party of friends on one of the smaller of the Canadian lakes. After some time, he had left the ordinary track of the rest of the party for a solitary run up the lake; and when about a mile and a half away from any assistance, he had unwittingly skated into a large air-hole, which had been made by some Indians in the ice for fishing purposes. His body was recovered; but not till life was extinct. In the suddenness and terrible nature of this calamity, everything was forgiven and forgotten by his widow, except the one fact, that he had been her husband, and that once on a time he had loved her very devotedly. By one loving heart, Captain Standril was long and sincerely mourned.

After a time, and from other sources, some particulars of my sister's married life reached us. That it had been a very unhappy one, marked by gambling and dissipation on the one hand, and by patient endurance on the other, is all that need to be said here. But there are some things that a woman cannot forgive, and Captain Standril did that which would not allow of his wife accompanying him abroad. The letter received by Alice on the morning of Christmas-eve contained a request that she would try to persuade mamma - poor as the latter now was - to sell out five hundred pounds' worth of stock, and remit him the proceeds.

I have nothing further to add, except that I was afterwards informed that at the time of my journey to Dr. Webb's, the ice of the left-hand channel was broken under one of the bridges. Had I taken that channel, as summoned to do by my ghostly conductor, I should, in all human probability, have met a fate similar to that of Captain Standril.

Dr. Webb is, however, still skeptical, and always speaks of the affair as "a very remarkable case of spectral illusion."

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