Excerpt from The Champion Skate Book and Complete Amateur's Guide: A Compendious Hand-Book Designed for Instruction, Use and Benefit of the Devotees and Aspirants of the Most Healthful, Graceful and Exilarating of All Gymnastic Exercises The idea of falling is so closely connected with learning to skate that the beginner very naturally wishes for some support from others. But it is very evident that there can be no perfect balance if the skater is not self - sustained, and without perfect bal ance graceful and easy skating is impossible. Ex ternal support, moreover, actually increases the liability of falling, as well as the risk of being twisted into a sideways fall. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.