A Magazine Club Supplies You With Everything, From The Quarterly To
The Sunday At Home.
Grand tournaments are organised at chess,
draughts, billiards and whist.
Once and again wandering artists
drop into our mountain valley, coming you know not whence, going
you cannot imagine whither, and belonging to every degree in the
hierarchy of musical art, from the recognised performer who
announces a concert for the evening, to the comic German family or
solitary long-haired German baritone, who surprises the guests at
dinner-time with songs and a collection. They are all of them good
to see; they, at least, are moving; they bring with them the
sentiment of the open road; yesterday, perhaps, they were in Tyrol,
and next week they will be far in Lombardy, while all we sick folk
still simmer in our mountain prison. Some of them, too, are
welcome as the flowers in May for their own sake; some of them may
have a human voice; some may have that magic which transforms a
wooden box into a song-bird, and what we jeeringly call a fiddle
into what we mention with respect as a violin. From that grinding
lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat
of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference
rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing
that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the
true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so
you will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, im
Schnee der Alpen. A hyacinth in a pot, a handful of primroses
packed in moss, or a piece of music by some one who knows the way
to the heart of a violin, are things that, in this invariable
sameness of the snows and frosty air, surprise you like an
adventure. It is droll, moreover, to compare the respect with
which the invalids attend a concert, and the ready contempt with
which they greet the dinner-time performers. Singing which they
would hear with real enthusiasm - possibly with tears - from a corner
of a drawing-room, is listened to with laughter when it is offered
by an unknown professional and no money has been taken at the door.
Of skating little need be said; in so snowy a climate the rinks
must be intelligently managed; their mismanagement will lead to
many days of vexation and some petty quarrelling, but when all goes
well, it is certainly curious, and perhaps rather unsafe, for the
invalid to skate under a burning sun, and walk back to his hotel in
a sweat, through long tracts of glare and passages of freezing
shadow. But the peculiar outdoor sport of this district is
tobogganing. A Scotchman may remember the low flat board, with the
front wheels on a pivot, which was called a hurlie; he may remember
this contrivance, laden with boys, as, laboriously started, it ran
rattling down the brae, and was, now successfully, now
unsuccessfully, steered round the corner at the foot; he may
remember scented summer evenings passed in this diversion, and many
a grazed skin, bloody cockscomb, and neglected lesson. The
toboggan is to the hurlie what the sled is to the carriage; it is a
hurlie upon runners; and if for a grating road you substitute a
long declivity of beaten snow, you can imagine the giddy career of
the tobogganist. The correct position is to sit; but the fantastic
will sometimes sit hind-foremost, or dare the descent upon their
belly or their back. A few steer with a pair of pointed sticks,
but it is more classical to use the feet. If the weight be heavy
and the track smooth, the toboggan takes the bit between its teeth;
and to steer a couple of full-sized friends in safety requires not
only judgment but desperate exertion. 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.
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