Well, you
take a pair of such skates and strap them on tightly until you can't
tell by the feel which is feet and which is wooden soles, and you
glide out upon the ice above the dam for, say about four hours, with
the wind from the northwest and the temperature about nine below, and
I tell you it is something grand. And if you run over a stick that
is frozen in the ice, or somebody bumps into you, or your feet slide
out from under you, and you strike on your ear and part of your face
on the ice, and go about ten feet ah, it's great! Simply great. And
it's nice too, to skate into an air-hole into water about up to your
neck, and have the whole mob around you whooping and "hollering" and
slapping their legs with glee, because they know it isn't deep
enough to drown you, and you look so comical trying to claw out. And
when you do get out, it takes such along time to get your skates of,
and you feel so kind of chilly like, and when you get home your
clothes are frozen stiff on you - Oh, who would willingly miss such
sport?
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.
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