Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1912-03-27

~O get fair view of things, the
novice ought to record his or
her first impressions of Swift
erland in winter in tho train
coming back. BY the time
you have settled down again at home,
and sit in your parlor to retail your
doings to your admiring and enVious
friends, the disagreeables, If any there
have been, have faded into oblivion,
and the Joys of even a bad Swiss win
ter. when contrasted with the rigors
of the ''old-fashioned" English article,
strike one so forcibly that you caa
only gasp out incoherences about
''the time of your life" and the wicked
waste of never having gone before
But in the train, when you perchance
can still see from the window the
peaks on which you have fioated and
slid and tumbled, and with the pros
pect of eight weary, dark hours jour
ney to Paris) you can put things
straight in your mind, writes r. M.
Morrison in Country Life. You are
not distracted by questions which
bring home to you how sleepy and
casual your observation has been.
You are not shamed into excuses and
depreciations before your experienced
and expert friends. who have fed
the Swiss winter in contempt and
despair. You are not compelled to
go into the conventional ecstasies
over the Alpine sunset. In the train
your opinion is as honest as no
0Dtnfnn
can be- Out of all your experiences,
the sensations of one day shine out
clear before all others. My most abid-
ing memory is of dazzling, brilliant
dav of a three-mile ascent, skis In
hand from the village to untrodden
and silent slopes, wall so warming
that. the destination reached, was
Glad to rest and lunch in the shade.
recall the quaint and mysterious
footnrints-afterwar identified as
deer's-found near the lunch tree and
Iazily pondered over. glow at the
remembrance of a slope, five hundred
wards long, virgin snow to the skier.
I had been only three days skier,
and q successful ascent was still be-
vond my dreams. l fell, and with re-
lief and surprise noted that | did not
fuIfl the prophecy of breaking my
toes 7 stood on the brow of the
slope and pushed myself off with the
baton. after the uneouth style of the
novice. For the briefest fraction of
a second | feared that my pose was
unbalanced and that I was fated to
fall The next, was given up to the
iov of swift motion, of the sweeping
career through the air and sunlight
uotil flew out of the sun into shadow
and suddenly grew cool and blind.
suppose everybody's introduction
10 skiing is very much the same.
Everyone has to get over the inclina-
tion to lift his feet and turn out his
toes. most people have to fight down
the awful feeling of terror which at
tacks them. not on their debut but
ON their second attempt; and not a
few I hope, have the sense (and the
knov9edge of French) to be able to
take in good part the grave COM
uents of the village children. These
ten-vear-old boys, to whom beautiful
skiing seems second nature, can
teach one much, although skiing is
not of the soil, but a recent importa-
ton from Norway. By the way. fall
ing a native, the best tutor is an
English schoolboy. who. having no re-
gard for his own neck or yours. does
not fiuster or fuss you, but rather I'M