Book excerpt: From the Original Introduction (1910) In this book the author has endeavored to condense some of the mass of material which he has collected during many years of the study and practice of figure skating in the United States, Canada and the skating centers of Europe. Enthusiastic interest and unusual opportunity for comparing the best styles of skating to be found among many nations, due to extended travel during the skating seasons, and the unbounded hospitality extended to him in all parts of the world where skating is looked upon as sport in the best sense of the word, have caused the author to venture on this little volume, which, on account of its convenient size, can be carried about and easily referred to when the learner is on skates. It is with some slight sense of responsibility, therefore, and as a contribution to national interest in a sport which really originated in America, that he endeavors to here set down his analysis of the new, artistic figure skating destined soon to be the standard all over the world.