ay to ride a clipper sled on a swift
coast was to go "belly-bump," prone on one's belly, with a foot
ready to steer at the right or left as the case might be. The
stability is surer because the centre of gravity is lower, the
wind resistance is less, and the method is safer and better, if it
is not so dignified. The records made thus converted the most
phlegmatic Englishmen at St. Moritz, and since then this has been
the approved fashion.

But we have gone coasting a long way from Ponkapoag Hill. There,
long before the Swiss course was thought of the evolution in sleds
was going on, and though Ponkapoag did not evolve the steel-frame
skeleton coaster it got some tasty rigs of its own. Similar things
were brought out all over New England, I fancy, on all big hills
where Yankee boys coasted. One of these was the double-runner, or
double-ripper as it was sometimes called, rather ominously. I meet
double-runners on the hills sometimes now-a-days, but not the
leviathans of old. The beginning of this community coaster is
simple. It is two clipper sleds fastened together so that the rear
one runs in the tracks of the front one. Then came a board placed
lengthwise across the two and the double-runner was fairly begun.
Later this board came to be a long plank that would hold a dozen.
With that the capacity of the common clipper sled was reached. But
they did not stop at that at Ponkapoag. They built two big sleds
specially, shod them with proper steel runners at the local
blacksmith shop, and set high above them an enormous, stout plank
with foot rests and all sorts of modern conveniences.

The men who told of this enormous rig, a "double-ripper" in very
truth, are dead and I can't prove it by them, so I hesitate to
state the length of this mammoth coasting device and the number of
people it would carry lest aspersions be cast on their veracity--and
mine--but it was very long and would carry a surprisingly
large number. All Ponkapoag was wont to come out of moonlight
nights and ride upon it, and its fame carried that of the little
village very far. To have coasted on the big Ponkapoag double-runner
was as much a thing to be mentioned boastfully in certain
sections as it was in others to have been presented at court.

Bob-sled is a proper, dictionary name for the ordinary form of
this device and it is used at Davos and St. Moritz for jolly
family parties on the straight courses. There they equip it with a
bugle to herald its