The New York herald., 1876-02-29
A slippery Day.

We said recently that we were not done
with spring yet, and yesterday proved it.
That treacherous and notorious season-why
called so we do not know, for it is always
out of season-made its temperance to the
general disgust of our inhabitants "Thank
Heaven r. many a citizen had exclaimed,
''spring is over, and we may now look for
ward to the warm, mild winds of winter,
faint with delicious scent of drowsy flowers" "
These fluctuations had hardly become gen.
eral before spring, which had been concealed
somewhere in the Arctic zone, returned and
covered the city with ice. New York be-
came gigantic skating rink. The glaciers
of Switzerland, the dykes of Holland are not
more dangerous than was this glizade.
Nothing could be more slippery than this
rain, which begat hail, which begat sleet,
which begat ice, which begat all manner of
ills. The whole population began to conjugate
the verb to slide. There was grand metropol-
itan chorus of 81 slide, thou slidest he slides,
we slide, you slide, they slide !" and the sud-
den and abrupt illustrations of this verb fire.
quently resulted in the conjugntion of an
other-'I sit, thou sittest, he sits, we sit,
You sit, they sit !" and this in turn evoked
the general grammatical formula of II damn,
thou damnest, he damns, we damn, you
damn, they damn" We believe they did,
Moody and Sankey to the contrary notwith-
standing. The streets seemed filed with in
Vulnerable Mr. Winkles oil making energetic
butunsuccessful endeavors to skate. But there
We're no Sammy Wellers near by for the Win
kles to hold on to, and had Mr.. Pickwick been
there he would have sternly pronounced them
all impostors who could not skate at all.
Yet he would have cheerfully admitted that
they could slide. How they slid was quite
another matter Here was man following in
voluntarily an isothermal line from his door
step to the gutter, and here another, slowly,
firmly but inevitably gliding toward GER
tain point of contact with the first. The diff
ference between foreknowledge and fore
ordination had numerous examples in these
foreseen but unpreventable collisions. And
now and then the astounded traveller would
meet some venerable and respected citizen
like Peter Cooper, who never was known to
have skated in his life, coming slowly down
the street, with his legs apart like the Colos-
sus of Rhodes, with the wind in his back and
anguish in his eye, sailing like rudderless
ship in momentary danger of wreck. Appa-
ritions of this kind were carefully avoided
by the wise, for they had frantic impulses to
embrace everything they met, from perfect
stranger to heartless awning post. Strange
encounters might have been seen by the
casual observer, of whom we have read so
much Married men embraced their mothers
in-law, and the unnatural spectacle was wit
messed of debtors clinging to their creditors
and refusing to let them so. Altogether,
yesterday was the most remarkable day for
sliding that New York has known for years,
and it is strong corroboration of our theory
that the seasons are all in conspiracy
against the happiness of mankind, that the
malignant return of spring should have been
accompanied by a universal fall.