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down-hill without a peculiar homesickness ' to see old Mount Royal lifting its royal crest against the night, and to hear some cliivalrous, dark-eyed French Canadian asking if “Mademoiselle will only honor me and my toboggan," and then with regret I remember that the mighty, rugged slide, v th many of its fellows, has fallen into (is «use the 1ast_few seasons, owing to that w -iable tyrant Fashion, who has recently .« iled very openly ongskating and snow- : ueing. But one never I1/KIIOWS the veerings of this weathercock, orhow soon the man- date will be issued that will cause young Canada to spring to it<’ feet, hailing with a glad and lustyvshout the returniof this-

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pleasure and}! existence. '.l'.‘his{._indeed.._1.s the ' essence. of-—to_]oo'gganing. ,_ I '

~Young Canada is wonderfully“ vigorous,

. .. daringly reckless as far as sport is con- ‘ cerned. but of all the wild. heedless pas-

times in his long catalogue of physical ex- ercise, tobogganing is undoubtedly the most hazardous.

Many. a gay young life has been dashed out at the root 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 fear- less, 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 calami- ties, 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, a by his immutable law of‘ never permitting the craft ' to escape the touch of his hand or foot while the pas- sengers are mounting, and by his despotic command that they “hang on whatever happens"--for fun is ended and foolhardi- ness begins the instant some swashbuckler thinks it very clever to. go down hill back- wards or standing up,‘ or to get a crowd aboard only to terrify them by letting the toboggan creep some feet toward the shute before he tears _madly after it, pitches him- self on the scant space left him “aft,” while‘ the craft swerves from side to side with his blundering antics and an accident

is barely averted. But many a’ terrible

spill have I had where no one was to ‘blame. Perhaps some tiny obstruction has

been on the shute, perhaps some unfortun- ate on the foregoing toboggan has lost his toque on the track and we had dashed over it, or a bit of our "rope line had slipped un- derneath; aye, for less things than these have I been pitched into space, tangled up

‘ informally with the rest of the crew and

landed with painful velocity ‘in a snow- drift or icebed, with an inharmonious mix- ture‘ of toques, mittens, moccasins and to- boggans_ atop of me, or worse to arise and see the latter sliding wilfully off by itself down the long, long shute, whither one must‘ travel torecover it. But who-minds an upset when there are -no serious re- sults? Yougscoop‘ the snow out from th depths of‘your collar, from. the hights of

‘ -your sleeves and on? you go, willing to risk

it again, just‘ for that dizzy moment of

I peril that hovers-,-‘above you as _you take the ' “dip,” ere you skim away on the level and

realize that you have a half mile tramp‘ be- tween you and the-spot you left a few sec-

_ onds before.

The best : toboggansr are constructed (of

. hickory. and measure anywhere from .five

to ‘eight feet in length, exclusive of ,the curl at the bow, which ‘should not roll above eight inches. The -fastest craft are built

. in slats between four and five. inches wide,

bringing the total width up to about seven- teen inches, and -the thinner the wood the me buildersyrun small wooden

.- g1‘1s= ‘ong he edges "from stem to stern,‘ -"just sufficientl

high for the fingers to slip 7 underneath, but‘ in "any. accident the ‘brittle wood is lia~ le to snap and splinter, which is exceedingl dangerous to the pas- sengers. The bette ‘way is to run a rope yer-y taut and strong through small staples

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trea‘.l.Cl_u '_a.'rsl’ide well-nigh perpend_i”c'u- ‘

lar, thedecent of which came nearer mak- ing my}hair=stand on end than anything--I, ever ‘experienced, for it is constructed by nature, and, like all her works, transcends the most cunning artifice of man. Down the long, ‘steep slopes of Mount Royal, that lifts its hugebulk behind the curious old French-Canadian city, the two gleaming tracks of ice look like silver wires sus- pended in midair, with a gray, cobwebby something, winding up alongsideuwhich a nearer view reveals to be a staircase. This and \a..ifew~yards of particularly abrupt “shute" are the only artificial adjuncts re- quired to perfect the most precipitous slide in Canada. The double tracks are separated by a ridge of ice, a little above a foot in hight, so that two toboggans can with safety race each other, from start to finish, a distance of three-quarters of a mile, at the end of which you are quite willing to dismount, considering the fact that the atmosphere always tarries at zero or there- abouts, and your mad flight through such air leaves "you as nearly frozen solid as humanity can be and yet live.

The first trip I took on this slide was a revelation to me as far as sport andspeed are concerned. It was “opening night" in carnival week, and the blaze of light and color, from summit to base, were dazzling enough to be blinding, even a mile distant. At the top of the slide a gigantic cord-wood bonfire seemed to lick the very heavens with its fiames,supplemented every three minutes with a burst of red,_green and orange lime- lights. At intervals of every twenty feet along shute, dip and far level track were stretched lines of Chinese lanterns over- head, and between these rows of light stood seemingly frost-proof men, wielding Roman candles and rockets, and themselves cos- tumed in the regulation blanket suit, with brillliant sashes and stockings and torches afiame on their toques.

Throngs of merrymakers crowded _the stairs and encircled the bonfire, chattering vivaciously in French and English‘, laugh- ing, jesting, trifling, and all awaiting with utmost good humor their turn at the slide, down which every second or two whizzed a daring little craft with its light-hearted crew, that disappeared for an instant under the first dip, arose on the second, vanished again, then slipped straight and swift adown _the long, narrow path, out of sight. Before us stood seventy-nine peo- ple, by actual count, all with toboggans upturned on the stern end to make room for those behind them--never an impatient word, never a jostle, never a pushing to get ahead or a rude, ungallant word. In all my life I have never witnessed such a brilliant and well-bred throng. The gorge- ously-bordered blanket costumes, the gay toques and sashes, the broidered moccasins, the vari-colored mittens, all worn alike by lads and lasses, the glitter of shows be- neath thousands of artificial lights, and beyond it all the black sky line of cedars along the mountain crest, and far, far aloft in the frozen heavens the white gleam of stars, scintillating from everlasting to everlasting.

In an ‘incredibly short time our turn came. They tucked me well into the bow, packed three others on behind me, down on one knee flopped our agile steerer, and we were off—slowly, slowly at first, with a subtle, deadly sort of movement, like the waters‘creeping fatefully to the brink of Niagara: then with a quick, sharp flash down the “shute,” and we whizzed through a. world of light to the crest of the first dip.

“Hang on now!” was all I heard from somewhere aft of me, and the next instant We dropped, down, down, a seemingly end-

96 pages, every page bearing a half-tone

‘should write for this wonderful little book.

less abyss, while the lights flashed by like

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}J\t\t-Assexrlteld ‘Theory, r Inonnce

‘ox.’ “

vials-v It 1s m6;ét'~‘-~su'rn1Tf 'ns—~ that she, old. ign0rant":belief"';in th" development ‘of"'a lower forgm’ of-'.}anim”a life from. la. ~h.a.1r; Lot.’ one of the’..YeI,«'-febrat_ .vsl1ould.still'lfind"ad-V vocates, For t the utter»».a.bsurdity.' ,-been

shown so‘~many’times that additional ‘com? V

ment is hardly called for. _ ‘ . . The common hair-worm, which’ gets’ its name from the ridiculous notion that it re- sults from a water-soaked hair, is a para- sitic animal which .passes the earlier stages of its existence in the bodies of insects, generally crickets or grasshoppers. In time the thread-like creature reaches a length of ten times that of its diseased supporter. It escapes from its early home in the in- sect’s body, after the grasshopper falls into the pool of water or mud-puddle, and there lays its eggs and dies. The life history of the hair-worm has been carefully studied by reliable observers, and we should not give credit to the stories of those more anx- ious to create or continue sensations than to settle a fact in na.-..r.:.l history. " Kalamazoo, Mich. MORRIS GIBBS.

Tfilll NATAL -NIGHT.

BY WM. , B. CHISHOLM.

Stars of the still Judean sky,

That watch-above the holy place; Behold a brighter star on high

That droops to kiss an Infant's face.

Inn of the sleeping Bethlehem, Behold, asif thy roof-tree, rent.

Let down in one rare diadem The Jewels of the firmamenti

‘Airs of the wintry midnight, hush: Hark to the sound of angel wings!

Ye bearded Magi, swifter rush

_ To greet the lowly King of Kings!

That’s What She Did.

The fair young‘ Chicagoan’s hand had been sought, and to some extent found, by a distinguished European nobleman.

That she was rich it is hardly necessary to state. v. ~_,i.\

That he was -poor but titled is equa1l'y\ unnecessary of statement. _ ' The girl's father was a simon pure Amer- ican. He had sized up the nobleman.

At the same time he was fond of his joke.

“Daddy,” she said to him in her airy- fairy-Lillian-lakefront manner, “the count has popped the question.”

“Has he?” inquired the father with in-

terest. “Well, my dear, we don't want‘

any foreign peppers around here, so you

just unpop it and let him slide." land the noble, patriotic girl let him s e.

Ills Appearance.

“You appear to be honest,” said the judge ., X 1

to the . prisoner.

“I guess appearances are against me, your honor,” was the frank response, “I’m

a ward politician."-

“ Complete Manhood," Andllow to Attain It. _ At last a medical work that tells_ the

causes, describes the effects, points the ‘-

remedy. This is scientifically the most val- uable, artistically the most beautiful, med- ical book that has appeared for years;

illustration in tints. Some of the subjects treated are Nervous Debility Impotency, Sterility, Develo ment, Var cocele, The Husband, Those ntendin Marriage, etc. Every man who would now the grand truths, the plain facts, the old secretsand the new discoveries of medical science as

applied to married life, who would atone» :

for past follies. and avoid future pitfalls, It will be sent free, under seal, while the

edition lasts. If convenient, inclose ten cents to pay postage alone‘. Address the;

'f*1i1.<1,,"!¥, rm.

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,..-.‘w‘_ ‘ I I __,

vs L ~L\v:;‘,;-VT, d Ut-

_ 11 ed ithe

publishers, Erie Medical Institute. Buffalo, I 74.

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