It may be questioned if a hatchment is now hung up, either on the dwelling, or in a church, in any part of America. They were to be seen, however, in the early part of the present century. Whenever any such traces of ancient usages are met with among us, by the traveller from the old world, he is apt to mistake them for the shadows “that coming events cast before,” instead of those of the past.--EDITOR.] CHAPTER XII. “Then the wine it gets into their heads, And turns the wit out of its station; Nonsense gets in, in its stead, And their puns are now all botheration.” _The Punning Society._ Guert Ten Eyck looked at me expressively, as the sleigh whirled round an angle of the building and disappeared. He then proposed that we should proceed. On ascending the main street, I was not a little surprised at discovering the sort of amusement that was going on, and in which it seemed to me all the youths of the place were engaged. By youths, I do not mean lads of twelve and fourteen, but young men of eighteen and twenty, the amusement being that of sliding down hill, or “coasting,” as I am told it is called in Boston. The acclivity was quite sharp, and of sufficient length to give an impetus to the sled, that was set in motion at a short distance above the English church; an impetus that would carry it past the Dutch church--a distance that was somewhat more than a quarter of a mile. The hand-sleds employed, were of a size and construction suited to the dimensions of those that used them; and, as a matter of course, there was no New Yorker that had not learned how to govern the motion of one of these vehicles, even when gliding down the steepest descent, with the nicest delicacy and greatest ease. As children, or boys as late in life as fourteen even, every male in the colony, and not a few of the females, had acquired this art; but this was the first place in which I had ever known adults to engage in the sport. The accidental circumstance of a hill's belonging to the principal street, joined to the severity of the winters, had rendered an amusement suited to grown people, that, elsewhere, was monopolized by the children. By the time we had ascended as high as the English church, a party of young officers came down from the fort, gay with the glass and the song of the regimental mess. No sooner did they reach the starting-point, than three or four of the more youthful got possession of as many sleds, and off they went, like the shot starting from its gun. Nobody seemed to think it strange; but, on the contrary, I observed that the elderly people looked on with a complacent gravity, that seemed to say how vividly the sight recalled the days of their own youth. I cannot say, however, that the strangers succeeded very well in managing their sleds, generally meeting with some stoppage before they reached the bottom of the hill.