Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/146

 not even scream. I felt as if my last hour had come. I remember to have dreamed once that I was falling down a bottomless abyss; and certainly, I thought the dream was being realized in the few seconds it took us to descend that hill. Such a horrible, feeling as came over me I hope never to experience again. Yet people do this for pleasure!

When we reached the end of the slide, I begged Nicolas, with tears in my eyes, to let me walk back to the place from which we had started; but he only laughed at me. I braced up my courage, and got on the sled again, saying, in a broken voice, that I knew I should die of fright, but I supposed Nicolas did not care. Down we went; and this time I got breath enough to scream, which was a great relief. I absolutely refused to be inveigled into trying it a second time.

I suppose there is a terrible fascination about it, like reading of murders. I had to eat twenty olives before I learned to like them, and it might be the same with the ice-hills: it is an acquired taste. We finally returned to the restaurant, where we took off our wraps, and had some hot tea, which served to revive my drooping spirits.

A discouraged-looking man took his seat at the piano, and played a few bars, then retired; and on a platform at one end of the room there appeared a group of six women and as many men, whose dark eyes and swarthy skins proclaimed their Bohemian origin. They took their seats in a semicircle; the leader—a hideous man, with a guitar—gave a signal, and they began to sing. It