On A Very Steep Track, With
A Keen Evening Frost, You May Have Moments Almost Too Appalling To
Be Called
Enjoyment; the head goes, the world vanishes; your blind
steed bounds below your weight; you reach the foot, with all
The
breath knocked out of your body, jarred and bewildered as though
you had just been subjected to a railway accident. Another element
of joyful horror is added by the formation of a train; one toboggan
being tied to another, perhaps to the number of half a dozen, only
the first rider being allowed to steer, and all the rest pledged to
put up their feet and follow their leader, with heart in mouth,
down the mad descent. This, particularly if the track begins with
a headlong plunge, is one of the most exhilarating follies in the
world, and the tobogganing invalid is early reconciled to
somersaults.
There is all manner of variety in the nature of the tracks, some
miles in length, others but a few yards, and yet like some short
rivers, furious in their brevity. All degrees of skill and courage
and taste may be suited in your neighbourhood. But perhaps the
true way to toboggan is alone and at night. First comes the
tedious climb, dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long
breathing-space, alone with snow and pinewoods, cold, silent and
solemn to the heart. Then you push of; the toboggan fetches way;
she begins to feel the hill, to glide, to, swim, to gallop. In a
breath you are out from under the pine trees, and a whole heavenful
of stars reels and flashes overhead. Then comes a vicious effort;
for by this time your wooden steed is speeding like the wind, and
you are spinning round a corner, and the whole glittering valley
and all the lights in all the great hotels lie for a moment at your
feet; and the next you are racing once more in the shadow of the
night with close-shut teeth and beating heart. Yet a little while
and you will be landed on the highroad by the door of your own
hotel. This, in an atmosphere tingling with forty degrees of
frost, in a night made luminous with stars and snow, and girt with
strange white mountains, teaches the pulse an unaccustomed tune and
adds a new excitement to the life of man upon his planet.
CHAPTER XII - THE STIMULATION OF THE ALPS
To any one who should come from a southern sanitarium to the Alps,
the row of sun-burned faces round the table would present the first
surprise. He would begin by looking for the invalids, and he would
lose his pains, for not one out of five of even the bad cases bears
the mark of sickness on his face. The plump sunshine from above
and its strong reverberation from below colour the skin like an
Indian climate; the treatment, which consists mainly of the open
air, exposes even the sickliest to tan, and a tableful of invalids
comes, in a month or two, to resemble a tableful of hunters.
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