Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/209

Rh ute, more or less, with nothing between its occupants and sudden death except the strength and skill of the amateur steersman, who must keep his own seat and steer the heavy load behind him. So it is. A man goes into battle with a cheer, but turns pale at finding himself number thirteen at the dinner-table.

Sliding down-hill was such sport as no language can begin to describe; but skating was unspeakably better. Those first skates! I wish I had them still, though I would show them with caution, lest the irreverent should laugh. They would be a spectacle. How voluminously the irons curled up in front! And how gracefully as well! A piece of true artistry. And how comfortably they were cut off short behind, so that you could stop "in short metre," no matter what speed you had on, by digging your heels into the ice. And what a complicated harness of straps was required to keep them in place. Those straps had much to answer for in the way of cold feet, to say nothing of the passion we were thrown into when one of them broke; and we a mile or two from