Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1919 — Skating Has Patron Saint. [ARTICLE]

Skating Has Patron Saint.

Skating is the only sport that can boasjt a patron saint. Her name was < Lyffwlna, and she sponsored skating back in the fourteenth century. Her home town was Schiedam, in Holland. Her family name was ancient and honorable, and her father followed the honorable profession of night watchman. Nevertheless, Thomas a Kempis, among other notables, found her interesting, for he met her and wrote the details of her life for all to read. Lydwina was fifteen when some boisterous girl friends dragged her out against her will to skate on the frozen canal. No sooner, had they started on their holiday excursion than one of them bumped into poor little Lydwina—and jammed a perfectly good rib. That put her put of the running for all time, it seems, and as she lay on her couch of pain she was comforted by strange visions, and before her death in 1433, it is claimed, wrought several miracles ( through her piety. ,