United States or Kazakhstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They selected a pious gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, and we left St. Paul at four o'clock one winter morning, in a prairie schooner on bob-sleds, to ride to La Crosse. One of the passengers was a pompous Southerner, who kept boasting of the "buck niggers" he had sold and the "niggers" he had caught, and his delight in that sort of work.
Three seized the ropes and began to drag the bobs back toward the hill. The rest fell in, trudging behind. But already from the group at the top, confused by distance, other swift black objects at spaced intervals had detached and came hurtling down. Some of them were bob-sleds; others hand-sleds carrying but a single passenger. Bobby stood by the gate post watching them.
I remember an instance that happened at the beginning of the first socialist administration in Schenectady: The officials had out of the goodness of their hearts suspended a city ordinance which forbade coasting with bob-sleds on the hills of the city. A few days later one of the sleds ran into a wagon and a little girl was killed.
There were all sorts of sleds: short sleds and long sleds, bob-sleds and flexible fliers. They held one, two, three, and sometimes even half a dozen boys and girls for there were girls, too all shouting and laughing as they went flying down the hill, some sitting and some lying down, but all flying and shouting, and none taking the least notice of Tommy.
To it come the children of the tenements with their bob-sleds and "belly-whoppers" made up of bits of board, sometimes without runners, and the girls from the fine houses facing the park and up along Eighty-sixth Street, in their toboggan togs with caps and tassels, and chaperoned by their young fellows, just a little disposed to turn up their noses at the motley show.
"'So I puts on a pair of them long, slidin' snowshoes they call 'skees' and slips for William Pemberton and the lonesome mountains. People don't call a thing 'skee' unless they hev good reason for it. Before I caught the hang of them durn disconnected bob-sleds I saw where the 'skee' come in.
As for real fun winter sports had been little more than a name to the girl from the Middle West before this winter. The boys had got their bob-sleds out before Thanksgiving. Toboggans were not popular in Poketown, for the coasting-places were too rough. At first Janice was really afraid to join the hilarious parties of boys and girls on some of the slides.
"But what about Robins?" questioned the foreman, whose thoughts were travelling away to a little group of bright faces anxiously awaiting his home-coming for a jolly Christmas. "Isn't there any spare team?" Sinclair asked. "None to spare, sir. We've only the bob-sleds, and they're not much for a sick man to ride on. But," he added after a pause, "we were going to fix up something to-night, sir."
But the horse is he gentle?" she asked, as she climbed in. "As a cow," Albert replied. "Git out o' this, Bones!" The main street was already filled with wood sleighs, bob-sleds filled with children, and men in light cutters, out for a race. Laughter was on the air, and the jingle-jangle of bells.
Stanlock, several of his neighbors, and three policemen, led by the two Scout messengers, burst into the room and announced that they had brought three bob-sleds to give them all a sleighride. And a glorious sleighride home it was for all except the two prisoners, whom the police took into custody. There was a real success in store for them.
Word Of The Day