The age-herald., 1898-02-06

the dozen or more ponies on the track at a given moment no two are started togeth- CT, as many are run from right to leIt as from left to right, and not the slightest attention is paid to the weight of the driver, who may be a slip of a lad in brief. frieze jacket or an aldermanic giant bun dled to the ears in heavy wolfskins. AS a result one would think that even the timekeepers themselves could hardly De the wiser for the proceedings.
 But in the kjaelkeagning-the kJaelke- coasting-is some compensation of excite ment. A kjaelke is a low, moderately heavy wooden sled, primarily intended Tor the use of fishermen on the ice and built to carry two or four persons. The steerer sits at the rear end, astride, guiding by means of a stout, flexible saplng pole twelve or more feet long, which, clamped under one arm and grasped in both hands. he drags along the track behind him. The passenger lies fiat on his back, his head on the steerer's knees, trusting to luck ana the law of gravitation to keep him there, since he has neither rope nor rail nor any other thing to hold to.
 The Coastefs' Paradise.
 Just behind Christiania city rises steep hill, F'rogner Saeter. This is the kjaelke paradise, for all winter long the government reserves there exclusively for coasters and ski-runners certain excel lent four-mile road, winding, partly in a zigzag, from base to summit. No vehicles are given ingress to block the way or mar its even surface. It is a stiff climb frmo the town up, but one grows used to stin climbs in Norway, and, however, the dra- gon-roofed .'sport room' perched at the top, with It's great cracking birch log hre and it's barbarous old Norsk interior decor ations, offers a resting place as cozy as quaint. where good hot coffee, chocolate and other comfortable things are to be had for refreshment.
 The coast starts from the "sport room" door Fancy yourself embarking for the first time, stretched face upward on mar row board, your hands lying useless at your sides, nothing to grasp anywhere about that can be of the least service to you, The steerer is in his place behind. Are you ready?" he asks, and gives It. tie shove with his pole, whereupon the board begins to move gently with slow gliding. This, you think is going to be delightful. The pace gradually accelerates faster, faster! You begin to feel nerv- ous, to wonder just what would happen if you shot off, almost to wish you had stayed at home; and then by degrees the speed drops to comfortable moderatlon. You regain your composure, and, sincerely trusting that your companion does not guess how scared you have been, devote your mind to enjoying the situation and to admiring the landscape
 Safe at Last.
 But before you have fairly realized how very odd that landscape looks, seen from the bottom up. and all flying, the k1aelke reasserts itself. Dangling for one sicken- ing moment in the air-whizz!-it is off, tearing down what appears to your star tied wits an angle of forty-hve degrees This is the upper end of the zgzag; for the next mile or more you are to be switched about corners. snapped around curves and spun along the ragged edge or precipices at rate that will literally stiff fen you with fright. You feel as you might in a runaway hand-truck let loose at the ton top of Mt Washington railway. If you turn your head to the right. behold an imminent swimming wall of seamy gray-the bare granite cliff If you look to the left, it is only to see heaving, shapeless black green mass--the frs on the precipice edge-whrling past in such wild confusion that you are glad to turn your dizzy eyes to the narroy strip of sky above. devoting such of your sense as has not been scattered, like dust from flying bullet, to lying as limp as may be, and hoping faintly that the next lurch around the next curve will neither smash you against the cliff nor send you down to break your bones in the rocky ravine be- l low.
 Ev4rxtssns. however. ends In time. even