In 1877 the first of this coasting was done by the English at St. Moritz, and ever since the courses there have been steadily improving, and "toboggans" as well. The final word has become a skeleton frame of steel, the wooden runners being entirely removed from within the shoe and the rider occupying a thin board hung between the upper frames. The under part of the heavy steel runner is grooved so as to grip the ice, and the whole "rocks" after the style of the old-fashioned "rocker" skate. Thus on a curve the rider, putting his weight aft is able to turn more rapidly without the sled losing its grip on the ice beneath. On these the Swiss coasters negotiate S curves at surprising speed, and are estimated to reach sixty or even seventy miles an hour on the straight stretches of the world-famous course. As might be supposed by any one who coasts, this speed is not made with the rider sitting on his sled girl fashion. Long ago the American visitors taught the St. Moritz coasters that the way to ride a clipper sled on a swift coast was to go "belly-bump," prone on one's belly, with a foot ready to steer at the right or left as the case might be. The stability is surer because the centre of gravity is lower, the wind resistance is less, and the method is safer and better, if it is not so dignified. The records made thus converted the most phlegmatic Englishmen at St. Moritz, and since then this has been the approved fashion. But we have gone coasting a long way from Ponkapoag Hill. There, long before the Swiss course was thought of the evolution in sleds was going on, and though Ponkapoag did not evolve the steel-frame skeleton coaster it got some tasty rigs of its own. Similar things were brought out all over New England, I fancy, on all big hills where Yankee boys coasted. One of these was the double-runner, or double-ripper as it was sometimes called, rather ominously. I meet double-runners on the hills sometimes now-a-days, but not the leviathans of old. The beginning of this community coaster is simple. It is two clipper sleds fastened together so that the rear one runs in the tracks of the front one. Then came a board placed lengthwise across the two and the double-runner was fairly begun. Later this board came to be a long plank that would hold a dozen. With that the capacity of the common clipper sled was reached. But they did not stop at that at Ponkapoag. They built two big sleds specially, shod them with proper steel runners at the local blacksmith shop, and set high above them an enormous, stout plank with foot rests and all sorts of modern conveniences.