And sleigh-riding! Me for sleigh-riding! You take a nice, sharp day in winter, when the sky is as blue as can be because all the moisture is frozen out of the air, a day when the snow under the sleigh runners whines and creaks, as if thousands of tiny wineglasses were being crushed by them, and the bells go jing-jing, jing-jing on the frosty air which just about takes the hide off your face; when you hold your mittens up to your ears and then have to take them down to slap yourself across the chest to get the blood agoing in your fingers; when you kick your feet together and dumbly wonder why it is your toes don't click like marbles; when the cold creeps up under your knitted pulse-warmers, and in at every possible little leak until it has soaked into your very bones; when you snuggle down under the lap-robe where it is warm as toast (day before yesterday's toast) and try to pull your shoulders up over your head; when a little drop hangs on the end of your nose, which has ceased to feel like a living, human nose, and now resembles something whittled to a point; when you hold your breath as long as you can, and your jaw waggles as if you were playing chin-chopper with it—Ah, that's the sport of kings! And after you have got as cold as you possibly can get, and simply cannot stand it a minute longer, you ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride. Once in a while you turn out for another sleigh, and nearly upset in the process, and you can see that in all points its occupants are exactly as you are, just as happy and contented. There aren't any dogs to run out and bark at you. Old Maje and Tige, and even little Bounce and Guess are snoozing behind the kitchen stove. All there is is just jing-jing, jing-jing, jing-jing, not a bird-cry or a sound of living creature. jing-jing, jing-jing..... Well, yes, kind o' monotonous, but still.... You pass a house, and a woman comes out to scrape off a plate to the chickens standing on one foot in a corner where the sun can get at them, and the wind cannot. She scrapes slowly, and looks at you as much as to say: “I wonder who's sick. Must be somebody going for the doctor, day like this.” And then she shudders: “B-b-b-oo-oo-oo!” and runs back into the house and slams the door hard. You snuffle and look at the chimney that has thick white smoke coming out of it, and consider that very likely a nice, warm fire is making all that smoke, and you snuffle again, and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and ride and 'ride. And about an hour and a half after you have given up all hopes, and are getting resigned to your fate, you turn off the big road and up the lane to the house where you are going on your pleasure-trip, and you hop out as nimble as a sack of potatoes, and hobble into the house, and don't say how-de-do or anything, but just make right for the stove. The people all squall out: “Why, ain't you 'most froze?” and if you answer, “Yes sum,” it's as much as ever. Generally you can't do anything but just stand and snuffle and look as if you hadn't a friend on earth. And about the time you get so that some spots are pretty warm, and other spots aren't as cold as they were, why then you wrap up, and go home again with the same experience, only more so. Fine! fine!
It's nice, too, when there's a whole crowd out together in a wagon-bed with straw in it. There's something so cozy in straw! And the tin horns you blow in each other's ear, and the songs you sing: “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,” and “Waw-unneeta! Waw-unneeta, ay-usk thy sowl if we shud part,” and “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” and “Johnny Shmoker,” and that variation of “John Brown's Body,” where every time you sing over the verse you leave off one more word, and somebody always forgets, and you laugh fit to kill yourself, and just have a grand time. And maybe you take a whole lot of canned cove oysters with you, and when you get out to Makemson's, or wherever it is you're going, Mrs. Makemson puts the kettle on and makes a stew, cooking the oysters till they are thoroughly done. And she makes coffee, the kind you can't tell from tea by the looks, and have to try twice before you can tell by the taste. Ah! winter brings many joyous sports and pastimes. And you get back home along about half-past two, and the fire's out, and the folks are in bed, and you have to be at the store to open up at seven—Laws! I wish it was so I could go sleigh-riding once more in the long winter evenings, when the pitcher in the spare bedroom bursts, and makes a noise like a cannon.
And sliding down hill, I like that.
What? Coasting? Never heard of it. If it's anything like sliding down hill, it's all right. For a joke you can take a barrel-stave and hold on to that and slide down. It goes like a scared rabbit, but that isn't so much the point as that it slews around and spills you into a drift. Sleds are lower and narrower than they used to be, and they also lack the artistic adornment of a pink, or a blue, or a black horse, painted with the same stencil but in different colors, and named “Dexter,” or “Rarus,” or “Goldsmith Maid.” These are good names, but nobody ever called his sled by a name. Boggs's hill, back of the lady's house that taught the infant-class in Sunday-school, was a good hill. It had a creek at the bottom, and a fine, long ride, eight or ten feet, on the ice. But Dangler's hill was the boss. It was the one we all made up our minds we would ride down some day when the snow was just right. We'd go over there' and look up to the brow of the hill and say: “Gee! But wouldn't a fellow come down like sixty, though?”
“Betchy!”
We'd look up again, and somebody would say: “Aw, come on. Less go over to Boggs's hill.”
“Thought you was goin' down Dangler's.”
“Yes, I know, but all the other fellows is over to Boggs's.”
“A-ah, ye're afraid.”
“Ain't either.”