Read the passage from Robert Palfrey Utter's essay, "Winter Mist"
closely and answer the question.
From a magazine with a rather cynical cover I learned very recently
that for pond skating the proper costume is brown homespun with a
fur collar on the jacket, whereas for private rinks one wears a gray
herringbone suit and taupe-colored alpine. Oh, barren years that I
have been a skater, and no one told me of this! And here's another
thing. I was patiently trying to acquire a counter turn under the idle
gaze of a hockey player who had no better business till the others
arrived than to watch my efforts. "What I don't see about that game,"
he said at last, "is who wins?" It had never occurred to me to ask. He
looked bored, and I remembered that the pictures in the magazine
showed the wearers of the careful costumes for rink and pond skating
as having rather blank eyes that looked illimitably bored. I have hopes
of the "rocker" and the "mohawk": I might acquire a proper costume
for skating on a small river if I could learn what it is; but a bored look
--why, even hockey does not bore me, unless I stop to watch it. I
don't wonder that those who play it look bored. Even Alexander, who
played a more imaginative game than hockey, was bored-poor
fellow, he should have taken up fancy skating in his youth; I never
heard of a human being who pretended to a complete conquest of it.
The phrase that begins, "Oh, the barren years..." has a tone best
described as