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 thills 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 min-
