There is just danger enough in tobogganing to make it exciting. An incautious guide may upset his passengers or run into another toboggan. The pace being from thirty to sixty miles an hour, a collision may result in some serious bruises. In most places the course chosen is some natural declivity where the undulations may be smoothed down so that the incline is even. Water is sometimes poured down the slope and allowed to freeze, so as to increase the slipperiness of the surface.
If any of our readers should have an opportunity of indulging in the sport, they will do well to bear in mind our advice, and if they undertake to act as pilots, must be very careful not to get excited. The fun which boys in the United States call coasting is only tobogganing on a small scale; but the prepared course and the long run of the sleigh on the level make the pastime much more exciting. Toboggans are sold at all the large general stores in Montreal and Toronto. There is very little demand for them in New York, but they may be obtained through a firm in William Street, New York.
[FUN AND PICTURES.]
BY CHARLES BARNARD.
Within a year or two there has been introduced into this country a new set of tools for girls and boys that will not only enable them to procure a great deal of useful information, but lots of downright fun as well.
The first thing necessary is a small wooden box painted black, and having a brass tube placed in one side. In this brass tube is a lens. You see what that is. It is a camera. With the camera is a set of sticks, hinged in the middle, and called a tripod. When folded up, it makes a neat package that can be carried in the hand. When opened and set up, the camera is placed on top, and kept in place by a screw.
There is also a little cap for the tube of the camera, and two, or even more flat little wooden boxes, with openings at each end, closed by wooden slides. There is also a small pocket-lantern that gives a red light. Before we can do any work we must buy some sensitive plates. These come in packages of a dozen each, wrapped in black paper. They are called gelatine plates, and sometimes dry plates. They are so sensitive that the smallest ray of white light would ruin them at once. We must open the package, therefore, by the light of our lantern in a dark room when we come to put our plates in the little wooden boxes. Say we take two and put them back to back; that gives us a chance to take four pictures.
It is a bright sunny day. Let us start for some fun and pictures. Ah! there's a girl knitting on the door-step under a grape-vine. She is busy, and sits quite still. We set the camera up before her. Point the brass tube at her, and draw out the bellows at the back of the camera. We have with us two sheets of pasteboard bound together at the edges, like a book, with black cloth. Hold this before the ground glass on the camera and look between the leaves or sheets of pasteboard. There is a picture of the girl. It is upside down, and a little dim and hazy. The first we can not help, and by moving the bellows in or out we change the picture until each twig and leaf is sharp and clear on the glass.
Now take off the ground glass very carefully, and place one of the wooden boxes in its place, taking care to put the two handles at the right, and to fasten the box to the camera by the clasp on top. Softly now! Do not stir the camera. Put on the cap, and carefully draw out the slide in the box next the camera. Steady. Take off the cap, and wait six seconds. Put on the cap, and put the slide in the box again. "Much obliged, little girl. We will send you your picture to-morrow." After that we see a boy fishing, a rose-bush in full bloom, and a pretty house by the pond, and we have a shot in the same way at each.