Later still came the day of the double-runner, when we slid down-hill gregariously, as it were, or, if you will, in chorus (the word is justified), every boy’s arms clinging to the boy in front of him. Older fellows now took a hand with us, and we resorted to the highway. With the icy track at its smoothest, we went the longer half of a mile, and had a mile and a half to walk back, the “going” being slippery enough to double the return distance.
At this time it was that there came a passing rage (such as communities are suddenly taken with, now and then, for a certain amusement—golf, croquet, or what not) for coasting in a huge pung. Grown people, men and women, filled it, while one man sat on a hand-sled between the thills and guided its course. Near the foot of the hill the road took a pretty sharp turn, with a stone wall on the awkward side of the way; but the excitement more than paid for the risk, and by sheer good luck a thaw intervened before anybody was killed.
There was quiet amusement in the neighborhood, I remember, because Mrs. C., who was distressingly timid about riding behind a horse (she could never be induced to get into a carriage unless the animal were “old as Time and slow as cold molasses”), saw no danger in this automobile on runners, which traveled at the rate of a mile a minute, 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 home, with the ice perfection—“a perfect glare”—and the fun at its height. This was before the day of “rockers,” of which I had a pair later,—and a proud boy I was. Pretty treacherous we found them to start with, or rather to stop with; but for better or worse we got the hang of their peculiarities before our skulls were irreparably broken.
Skating then was like whist-playing now,—an endless study. You thought you were fairly good at it till a new boy came along and showed you tricks such as you had never dreamed of; just as you thought, perhaps, that you could play whist till you sat opposite a man who asked, in a tone between bewilderment and asperity, why on earth you led him a heart at a certain critical stage, or why in the name of common sense you didn’t know that the ten of clubs was on your left. Art is long. It was true then, as it is now. But what matter? We skated for fun, as we did everything else (out of school), except to shovel paths and saw wood. Those things were work. And work was longer even than art. Work was never done. So it seemed. And how bleak and comfortless the weather was while we were doing it! A cruel world, and no mistake. But half an hour afterward, on the hillside or the pond, the breeze was just balmy, and life—there was no time to think how good we found it. No doubt it is true, as the poet said,—
“There’s something in a flying horse,
There’s something in a huge balloon;”
but there’s more, a thousand times over, in being a boy.
“DOWN AT THE STORE”
I talked, a week ago, as if, in my time as a boy, we lived out-of-doors every day, and all day long, regardless of everything that winter could do to hinder us. That was an exaggeration. Now and then there came a time when the weather shook itself loose, as it were, and bore down upon us with banners flying. Then the strong man bowed himself, and even the playful boy took to his burrow. The pond might be smooth as glass, but he did not skate; the hill-track might be in prime condition, but he did not slide. He sang low, and waited for a change.