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.

But apart from the lower animal nature, in this barbaric sport you are never confident of your dearest friends. Thus, we had been a pleasant and hilarious party at the international bal masqué: the ardour of the stirrup-cup was still upon us as we attained the brow of the decline. By a happy inspiration I had proposed that my friend Mr. Stark Munro, being a heavy-weight and disguised as a Völsunga Saga, should proceed in the van to clear any incidental drift or desultory avalanche. He disappeared headlong down the pine-forest track followed by the Ace of Clubs, a Sardinian Brigand, and a Tonsured Benedictine. All the costumes gained in picturesqueness from the Arctic background.

The New Woman of the party, attired as Good Queen Bess, begged me to precede her, arguing that I should go faster on my Skeleton than she on her Swiss. I engaged to do so on the understanding that she should allow me seven minutes' start in case of eventualities, the course being usually done in some 5¾ minutes under happy conditions. She was to be succeeded by Antigone, the Spirit of the Engadine and the Mother of the Gracchi.

I do not greatly care to linger over the details of my descent. I had started gaily humming those Elizabethan lines, "Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"—out of pure gallantry to Good Queen Bess who had given me a dainty little cow-bell as a favour at the cotillon; and I had been travelling cautiously for 8½ minutes, with my nose, no fewer than six fingers, and all the toes on each foot frostbitten, and a half-moon piece already gone out of my calf at the spot where it had attracted the notice of the St. Bernard wolf-hound, when, even as I was navigating a rotten bridge at a sharp turn, I heard a rushing sound out of the night behind me, and "Achtung!" (the terrible warning-note of the tobogganer) rang in my stricken ear.

I had barely time to throw a backward glance of horror and deprecation, when the projecting feet of Good Queen Bess, her toboggan and her spiked steering-pegs were upon me.

The bridge had never been strong in point of bulwarks; the torrent which it spans is rapid and fed from icy heights; its banks do not lend themselves to debarkation.

When I recovered consciousness by force of exquisitely painful restoratives applied by the Völsunga Saga, the Mother of the Gracchi and Good Queen Bess (herself unscratched, though the plush of her toboggan was tarnished with my gore). I was solemnly intoning, "World without end: Achtung!" with all the conviction of a cathedral tenor. I am going home the day after to-morrow.

Suggestion.—A certain restaurant not a hundred miles away from the St. James's Theatre advertises, among other attractions, "Dîner Salon Gobelin, 7s. 6d." But wouldn't it be more appropriate to spell the last word "Gobbling"?

THE ECUADOR BONDHOLDER'S SONG.

Air—"Toréador."

["After its recent behaviour, Ecuador cannot be said to have any credit worth talking about."—Times City Article, February 19.]

From H. W. L.'s Summary of the Debate last Thursday in the Daily News.—"Mr. Barlow approved the action of the Government in exempting coarser yarns from duties." This is not exactly what might have been expected from Mr. Barlow, but no doubt Masters Sandford and Merton in the Strangers' Gallery were mightily delighted at the prospect of "coarser yarns"—(which is only another name for men's stories after dinner when the ladies have left the room)—being "exempted from duties." Really our old friend, the preceptor of Sandford and Merton, has deteriorated, and Mr. Punch is severely against him on this point.

FEDERATION FOR THE SNOW-SWEEPERS.

Leader. "Now, don't forget, the Union rate of pay is Fourpence a Doorway. Any Chap workin' for less is a bloomin' 'Blackleg'!"

THE BOOT-BILLS OF NARCISSUS.

An Irrelevant Biography.

(Scraps collected by Richard Medallion.)

SCRAP I.—Horticulture. (Boot-trees.)

Published at the Bodily Head. All body and precious little head.

"Ah! old men's boots don't go there, Sir," said the boot-maker to me one day, rather pointedly, pointing to the toes of the boots I had brought him for mending. As I danced home, writing another chronicle with every springing step, the remark filled me with reflection—such reflection, reader, as your mirror shows you when you gaze in it to rejoice in your own beauty.

Have you kept a diary for thirty years? Dear me! And have you kept your gas bills, your water-rates, your Christmas-cards, your writs, your circulars of summer sales? I might never have undertaken to write this biography if I had not chanced one evening—being unoccupied—to break open a private desk belonging to my friend Narcissus, and tearing open an envelope (sealed, and labelled "Compromising Postcards—to be opened before my death,") came across these old boot-bills, and been struck by the manner in which there lay revealed in them the story of the years over which they ran....

SCRAP II.—The Happy Home.

The first night we went to see