Wreaths of Friendship: A Gift for the Young

SLIDING DOWN HILL.

Say what you will—­talk about cold hands, feet, and noses, as much as you please—­there are about as fine sports in winter as we get in the whole year.  There is something very exciting in snow.  A snow storm acts like electricity upon the spirits of the boys—­and girls too, for that matter.  How busy we used to be, on Saturday afternoon, when there was no school, as soon as the first flakes of snow had whitened the ground, making new sleds, and mending up old ones.

Our southern readers know very little about these sports of winter.  I have a good mind to enlighten them a little.  Imagine, my young friends—­you who live so near the tropics that snow and ice are objects of curiosity—­imagine, if you can, the earth covered to the depth of two feet or more with snow.  In some places, the drifts are as high as your head, and higher too.  When it first falls, the particles are loosely thrown together; but a warm sun or a little shower of rain melts them down a little, and then comes a night cold enough to freeze up your mouth, if you don’t look out, and the surface of the snow becomes hard and slippery.  Then such a time as the boys have sliding down hill—­why, it is worth coming up as far north as New York, and running the risk of having your fingers frozen a little, to see them at it, and take a few trips down the hill.

[Illustration:  SLIDING DOWN HILL.]

A sled constructed for this purpose is a very simple thing.  I will sketch one for you.  Here it is, and a boy carrying it up the hill.

When the boy gets to the top of the hill, he sometimes lies and sometimes sits up on his sled, and lets it go.  It finds its way down, without any of the boy’s help, you may depend upon it.  He has to guide it a little with his feet, though.  If he did not, he might come in contact with another boy’s sled, or a rock, perhaps; and that would be rather a serious joke, when the sled was going like the cars on a railroad.

Sometimes there are a dozen boys, all or nearly all with a sled of their own, sliding down the same hill at once.  In fact, we used to have the whole school at it, now and then, when I was a little boy.  It was a merry time then, you may be sure.  Occasionally we would have a large sled, which it took three or four boys to draw up the hill.  Then half a dozen of us would get on, and slide down in advance of the wind, it seemed to me—­for it was so swift that I scarcely could breathe—­until we came up all standing in a huge snow bank.

Sometimes, when we were half way down, and our locomotive was under a full pressure of steam, a boy would fall off, and, not being able to check the force he received from the sled, would go down to the bottom of the hill in a manner calculated to raise a very stormy concert of laughter from the rest of the boys.  And the poor John Gilpin enjoyed the fun, too, or tried to enjoy it, as much as any of them, though he did not laugh quite so heartily; and he could well be pardoned for not doing that, certainly, until he had got to the end of his ludicrous race.

I can recollect a great many funny adventures connected with sliding down hill.  I don’t know that I ever laughed more in my life at any one time, than I did once at a feat of Jack Mason’s.  Jack was a courageous fellow—­one of the most daring boys in the whole school.  Some thirty or forty of us were one bright Saturday afternoon sliding down a fine hill, with a good level valley at its foot, when Jack challenged the boys to go down the other side, which was a great deal steeper, and which had an immense drift of snow at the bottom.  No one dared to do it.  We all thought it would be rather too serious business.  Jack surveyed the ground for a few minutes, and screwed his courage up to the highest point.  “I am going down,” said he.  We tried to dissuade him, but it was of no use.  When Jack had made up his mind, you might as well attempt to turn the course of the north wind as to turn him.  The words were no sooner out of his mouth, than down he went, like an arrow.  We trembled for him, and held our breath almost, as we watched his sled; for it used to be a proverb with us, that Jack would break his neck one of these days, and we were not without our fears that the day had come.

Down went Jack on his sled, and in a few moments he was plunged in the snow bank out of sight.  We all ran down to dig him out, scarcely daring to hope we should find him alive.  We worked like beavers for a considerable time, and found nothing of the poor adventurer.  At last, more than a rod from where he entered the bank, up popped Jack, as white with snow as if he had been into a flour barrel, tugging his sled after him, and grinning like a right merry fellow, as he was.  Take it all in all, it was one of the most laughable sights I ever saw; and now as I write, and a sort of a daguerreotype likeness of Jack, just emerging, like a ghost, from that snow bank, comes up to my mind, I have to stop and laugh almost as heartily as I did at the scene itself, when it occurred.