One may add that if a pine-tree, or a telegraph post, or an ascending hay-sleigh opposes your career, you learn by the simple interposition of your head to save the delicate machinery of the toboggan from brutalization. It may be that by inadvertence you have attained an impetus so terrific that you overtake a walking horse in possession of the path. Once again your headpiece will protect the instrument from the fiery choler of the beast's hind hoof. After some two miles of fortuitous descent, diversified by such checks as I have here shadowed forth, you will be rounding the final corner at a pointed angle of 45°, travelling perhaps several miles per hour, when a large beer-cart with an upward tendency will dispute the road. Then the banked snow shall be your pall, and your _requiescat_ shall be rendered by the local teamster in German of a bastard order. Nor is this all. To the beetling edge of the descent you will first have been conveyed by an impetuous _zwei-spänner_, thoughtlessly gay with bells and feathers. Twenty-five candidates having urged their claims for the five seats, some will have need to be content to trail behind on their toboggans. As one wanting in experience, you will have the last place assigned to you, or else the last but one, with a casual riderless machine at the tail-end to give you an unholy spasm as it swings off the track round the corners. At intervals, while your pensive mind is absorbed upon the maintenance of a happy equilibrium, rendered strangely-difficult by the ruthless speed of the sleigh, some two or perhaps three of the tailing-party will fall off in front. The sharp contact of several raked boots with your open countenance draws your attention to the altered condition of things. Over the mangled bodies of friend and foe you are carried forward. The sleigh is tardily arrested, and your innocent head becomes the recipient of fearless abuse. Or again, from some mountain-hut upon the route issues forth a gross and even elephantine dog, born of unhallowed union between a wolfhound and an evilly-bred St. Bernard. Foiled in his attack upon the head of the caravan he revenges himself upon the outstretched leg of the hindmost. The lacerated calf will be your own. This is well enough in open daylight, and when you are swathed in buskins from heel to hip, and your rakes are good for retaliation. But in doubtful moonlight with the air at 15° below zero, as you toboggan back to your hostelry in the valley from a fancy dress ball, where you have simulated _Hamlet_ in black silk tights and pumps, the humour lies purely on the side of the dog.