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WINTER AS IT WAS WITH the
wind
howling from the northwest, and the mercury crouching below the zero
mark, it
seems a good time to sit in the house and think of winter as it used to
be.
What is the advantage of growing old, if one cannot find an hour now
and then
for the pleasures of memory? The year's
end is
for the young. Such is the order of the world, the universal paradox.
Opposite
seeks opposite. And we were young once, — a good while ago, — and for
us, also,
winter was a bright and busy season, its days all too short and too
few. I
speak of “weekdays,” be it understood. As for winter Sundays, in an
unwarmed
meeting-house (though the sermon might be like the breath of
Nebuchadnezzar's
furnace), we should have been paragons of early piety, beings too good
to live,
if we had wished the hours longer. Let their miseries be forgotten. On
week-days, once
out of school, we wasted no time. We knew where we were going, and we
want on
the run. We were boys, not men. Some of us, at least, were not yet
infected
with the idea that we ever should be men. We aspired neither to men's
work nor
to men's pleasures. We aimed not at self-improvement. We thought not of
getting
rich. We might recite “Excelsior” in the schoolroom, but it did us no
harm;
our innocence was incorruptible. Two things we did: we skated, and we
slid
down-hill. There was always either snow or ice. The present
demoralization of
the seasons had not yet begun. Winter was winter. Snowdrifts were over
your
head, and ice was three feet thick. And zero — for boys who slept in
attics to
which no particle of artificial heat ever penetrated, zero was
something like
summer. Young America was tough in those days. I recall
at this
moment the bitterly cold day when one of our number skated into an
airhole on
Whitman's Pond. It was during the noon recess. His home was a mile or
more east
of the pond, and the schoolhouse was at least a mile west of the pond.
He sank
into the water up to his chin, and saved himself with difficulty, the
airhole
luckily being small and the ice firm about the edges. What would a
twentieth-century boy do under such circumstances? I can only guess.
But I know
what Charles H. did. He same back to the schoolhouse first, to make his
apologies to the master; I can see him now, as he came in smiling,
looking just
a little foolish; then he ran home — three miles, perhaps — to change
his
clothing. And he is living still. Oh, yes, we were tough, — or we died
young. That was
while we
were in the high school, when I was perhaps eleven or twelve years old.
But my
liveliest recollections of winter antedate that period by several
years. Then
sliding down-hill was our dearest excitement. Ours was “no great of a
hill,” to
use a form of speech common among us; I smile now as I go past it; but
it could
not have suited us better if it had been made on purpose; and no half
holiday
or moonlight evening was long enough to exhaust our enjoyment of the
exercise
—walking up and sliding down, walking up and sliding down.
“Monotonous,” do I
hear some one say? It was monotony such as would have ended too soon
though it
had lasted forever. If I had a thousand dollars to spend in an
afternoon's
sport now, I should not know how to get half as much exhilaration out
of it as
two hours on that snow-covered slope afforded. There is something in a
boy's
spirits that a man's money can never buy, nor a man's will bring back
to him. As years
passed, we
ventured farther from home to a steeper and longer declivity. Glorious
hours we
spent there, every boy riding his own sled after his own fashion. Boys
who were
boys rode “side-saddle” or “belly-bump;” but here and there a timid
soul, or
one who considered the toes of his boots, condescended to an upright
position,
feet foremost, like a girl — in the language of the polite people, sur son séant. Later
still came
the day of the double-runner, when we slid down-hill gregariously, as
it were,
or, if you will, in chorus (the word is justified), every boy's arms
clinging
to the boy in front of him. Older fellows now took a hand with us, and
we
resorted to the highway. With the icy track at its smoothest, we went
the
longer half of a mile, and had a mile and a half to walk back, the
“going”
being slippery enough to double the return distance. At this
time it was
that there came a passing rage (such as communities are suddenly taken
with,
now and then, for a certain amusement — golf, croquet, or what not) for
coasting in a huge pung. Grown people, men and women, filled it, while
one man
sat on a hand-sled between the thins and guided its course. Near the
foot of
the hill the road took a pretty sharp turn, with a stone wall on the
awkward
side of the way; but the excitement more than paid for the risk, and by
sheer
good luck a thaw intervened before anybody was killed. There was
quiet
amusement in the neighborhood, I remember, because Mrs. C., who was
distressingly timid about riding behind a horse (she could never be
induced to
get into a carriage unless the animal were “old as Time and slow as
cold
molasses”), saw no danger in this automobile on runners, which traveled
at the
rate of a mile a minute, more or less, with nothing between its
occupants and
sudden death except the strength and skill of the amateur steersman,
who must
keep his own seat and steer the heavy load behind him. So it is. A man
goes
into battle with a cheer, but turns pale at finding himself number
thirteen at
the dinner-table. Sliding
down-hill
was such sport as no language can begin to describe; but skating was
unspeakably better. Those first skates! I wish I had them still, though
I would
show them with caution, lest the irreverent should laugh. They would be
a
spectacle. How voluminously the irons curled up in front! And how
gracefully as
well! A piece of true artistry. And how comfortably they were cut off
short behind,
so that you could stop “in short metre,” no matter what speed you had
on, by
digging your heels into the ice. And what a complicated harness of
straps was
required to keep them in place. Those straps had much to answer for in
the way
of cold feet, to say nothing of the passion we were thrown into when
one of
them broke; and we a mile or two from home, with the ice perfection —
“a
perfect glare” — and the fun at its height. This was before the day of
“rockers,” of which I had a pair later, — and a proud boy I was. Pretty
treacherous we found them to start with, or rather to stop with; but
for better
or worse we got the hang of their peculiarities before our skulls were
irreparably
broken. Skating
then was like whist-playing now, — an endless
study. You thought you were fairly good at it till a new boy came along
and
showed you tricks such as you had never dreamed of; just as you
thought, perhaps,
that you could play whist till you sat opposite a man who asked, in a
tone
between bewilderment and asperity, why on earth you led him a heart at
a
certain critical stage, or why in the name of common sense you didn’t
know that
the ten of clubs was on your left. Art is long. It was true then, as it
is now.
But what matter? We skated for fun, as we did everything else (out of
school),
except to shovel paths and saw wood. Those things were work. And work
was
longer even than art. Work was never done. So it
seemed. And how bleak and comfortless the weather was while we were
doing it! A
cruel world, and no mistake. But half an hour afterward, on the
hillside or
the pond, the breeze was just balmy, and life — there was no time to
think how
good we found it. No doubt it is true, as the poet said, “There's
something in a flying horse,
There’s something in a huge balloon;” but there’s more, a
thousand times
over, in being a boy. |