/‘ 4 z 4». I8 71, RECKLESS YOUNG CANADA

How IT RISKS LIFE AND LIl\/[l3 FOR THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE. A WINTER SPORT THAT TAKES ONE’S BREATH AWAY. E. PAULINE JOHNSON DESCRIBES ITS PLEASURES AND DANGERS.

What is that constituent of youth inherent with us all that yields to this witchery of recklessness, that loves a dash of danger in our pleasure making? We see it in the child who wants to play with Lucifer matches because it is told by nurse that “they are bad, and will bite baby,” it bubbles out in the school boy, who skates so near to the big yawning airhole in the ice that the brittle substance splits beneath his feet and he strides off just in time to save himself from a horrible death, or at the least a perilous ducking while he assures his comrades he “wasn’t scart”[sic], and tries the experiment again just because the dangerous sport adds such intoxication to the otherwise uninteresting, because undeniable security of his pastime and play hour. We see it in the man, whose friend coaxes him to drop that hazardous friendship with his old-time love, who is another man’s wife now. Only to the aged whose life lies behind them does danger lose its spicy flavor, but to youth, and health, and warm young blood, oh! the irresistible fascination of risk and venture. To hold one’s breath on the pinnacle of uncertainty, to feel one’s pulses bound with excitement, then freeze with [the] horror of physical extinction. This, indeed, is the essence of life and pleasure and existence. This indeed is the essence of--tobogganing.

Young Canada is wonderfiilly vigorous, daringly reckless, as far as sport is concerned, but of all the wild, heedless pastimes in his long catalogue of physical exercise, tobogganing is undoubtedly the most hazardous.

Many a gay young life has been dashed out at the foot of the treacherous slide, many a sturdy limb snapped asunder, many a glowing cheek cut and scarred for a life time, but still the rollicking sport goes on, each robust gamester strong in the faith that theirs is the one charmed existence to which mishap is least likely to occur. And after all there is little to fear if the “man at the helm” knows the track and has confidence in his own steering, but he must be strong, keen-eyed and absolutely fearless, or woe be to the passengers he essays to pilot down hill on the wings of the wind; woe to his craft, and direst of all calamities, woe to his reputation as a tobogganist.

But, like all true sportsmen, he is keenly alive to the dangers of careless and tricky practices. One can always distinguish the reliable veteran by the painstaking fashion he has of seeing that the passengers’ coats, skirts and sashes are all well tucked under before the start, by his immutable law of never permitting the craft to escape the touch of his hand or foot while the passengers are mounting, and by his despotic command that they “hang on whatever happens”--for fim is ended and foolhardiness begins the instant some swashbuckler thinks it very clever to go down hill backwards or standing up, or to get a crowd aboard, only to terrify them by letting the toboggan creep some feet toward the