Anything but a Methodist-looking place inside. The room, which was like a large public bath-room, was crowded with women, young and old, skating or preparing to skate, for husbands, and spread in maiden rays over the glistening area of ice, gliding, swooping, revolving on legs of every description, which were generally revealed to mortal gaze in proportion to their goodness, and therefore were displayed on a principle so far unobjectionable. The room was lighted with gas, which, with the heat of the crowd, made the ice rather sloppy; but the skating of the natives was admirable, and some hardened campaigners of foreign origin had by long practice learned to emulate the graces and skill of the inhabitants. It was a mighty pretty sight. The spectators sat or stood on the raised ledge round the ice parallelogram like swallows on a cliff, and now and then dashed off and swept away as if on the wing over the surface, in couples or alone, executing quadrilles, mazurkas, waltzes, and tours de force, that made one conceive the laws of gravitation must be suspended in the Rink, and that the outside edge is the most stable place for the human foot and figure. Mercy, what a crash! There is a fine stout young lady sprawling on the ice, tripped up by Dontstop of the Guards, who is making a first attempt, to the detriment of the lieges. How delighted the ladies are, and pretend not to be; for the fallen fair one is the best contortionist in the place! She is on her legs again--has shaken the powdered ice and splash off her dandy jacket and neat little breeches,--yes, they wear breeches, a good many of them,--and is zigzagging about once more like a pretty noiseless firework. The little children skate, so do most portentous mammas. A line of recently arrived officers, in fur caps and coats, look on, all sucking their canes, and resolving to take private lessons early in the morning. Some, in the goose-step stage, perform awful first lines with their skates, and leave me in doubt as to whether they will split up or dash out their brains. The young ladies pretend to avoid them with unanimity, but sail round them still as seagulls sweep by a drowning man. And if a fellow should fall--and be saved by a lady? Well! It may end in an introduction, and a condition of “muffinage.” And what that is we must tell you hereafter. I can’t answer your question as to whether the women were pretty; eyes dark generally, and good complexions. The Rink is a bad place to judge of that point.