Winter

At Dartmouth. Some of the girls had come up that morning, and some the night before. They brought dance-dresses, high rawhide boots, Jaeger sweaters, fur coats, skates; the boys who had asked them up gave them skis and snowshoes if they wanted them. Last week there was a great parade by torchlight from the campus to Occum Pond. The college band was playing, and visitors rode in sleigh barges each pulled by four horses. The students gave a play, Fill the Bowl Up, on Occum Pond and a committee of solemn judges selected Jeannette Ross of Maplewood, N. J., and Miss Wheelock's School in Boston as Dartmouth Carnival Queen and the prettiest girl there--a title that was another feather in the cap of smart junior and Phi Gamma Pitkin, who had asked her up. There was some roughhousing on the ice called a moccasin dance, discreeter dances indoors; skating, tobogganing, skiing went on next morning, but the most interesting event was the slalom race. Down from the top of Balch Hill, toward the dark skirt of pinewoods and the scattered crowd plunged the slalomers with a spiked pole in each hand. A slalom race is an obstacle race on skis; all the way down the course little red flags nailed to stakes on the white curve of the mountain pointed the racers to sudden curves around tree-stumps, past rocks, through the beds of hidden brooks. Slalomer Joseph Whyte of New Hampshire was too good for young Bryce Grayson-Bell of McGill, and the best Sander of Dartmouth could do was third. Pederson won the straight one-mile ski race for New Hampshire.

Figures. Figure-skaters should know the 72 recognized figures. Last week at Madison Square Garden the finalists in the world's figure skating championship were allowed five minutes on the ice to show their ability. Sonja Henie had come from Norway and had been practicing in Manhattan for five weeks in preparation for her five minutes (TIME, Jan. 20). As she ran through the gate and started diagonally across the ice in the sprint that gave her speed it was clear that she was nervous. Once she slipped, brushed the ice with her fingertips, caught her balance, smiled and flushed, and after that she was at ease. Her whirls, waltzes, glides and rockers, executed to such tunes as "Over the Waves" and "The Skaters" were technically perfect and filled with joy and grace. As expected, she won the world's figure skating championship for ladies for the fourth time, and then skated an exhibition with Karl Schaefer of Vienna who, as far superior to his competitors as she to hers, had won the men's championship. Said a Manhattan journalist of Henie: "Her costume was an eye-popper. . . . The flame-flowered little Nasturtium of the North swept straight into the hearts of her spectators." Fancy Skater J. Lester Madden of Boston wore a red necktie, fell down four times.

In Ottawa. They started at Confederation Park. Along the snow-packed smoothness, like porcelain, of the Driveway to Dow's Lake, then along Carling Avenue to Richmond Road, left at Bell's Corners to Fallowfield and from Fallowfield home, over a back road to the Prescott Highway, and so to Dow's Lake again, and the finish line. Seven teams jogged along, started by the pistol of His Excellency, Viscount Willingdon. Not long ago the Canadian Government encouraged dog-team races because dog teams were the only freight haulers of the northern wilderness after October, an important factor in territorial expansion. Now tractors are taking their place, so the government sanctions dog-team races for another reason-- because it is great sport and attracts visitors. The course was 90 miles long, and the teams covered it in three days, 30 miles a day. Leonard Seppala, the man who took the serum to Nome (TIME, Feb. 9, 1925) was in it, but Emile St. Goddard of The Pas, Manitoba, finished in 1 hr. 2 min. winning the $1,000 prize for Ottawa's first dog derby. All week there were parades by snowshoe clubs, dances on the ice in fancy dress, tobogganing, ski-jumping, skating, for Ottawa was celebrating its annual winter carnival.

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