Round the Sanctums.

Otago Witness, Issue 1325, 21 April 1877, Page 21

Round the Sanctums.

SLEIGHIKG.

We take the following extract from a private letter written by the Rev. Charles Clark, from Canada, to a friend in Melbourne, and published in the Argus:— "The people here brag loudly of their sledging. It is fine sport, but neither Smythe nor I can find anything in it that may not be secured in equal if not greater perfection on wheels, and in summer time. I rather fancy that, like the Boston people with their oleaginous messes of "pork and beans," the taste for sledging is an inherited one. Anyhow, it is a necessity if locomotion is to take place in the winter, so that they have tried to make the beat of it, and have so far auceeded as to make it a fashionable pastime. Of course, the young bloods find plenty of fun in Bledging parties by moonlight, for this country abounds with handsome, rosy, well-fed girls, whose manifest health and charming complexions testify to the wholesomeness of their rigorous climate, and kindle the unqualified admiration of two beholders from the antipodes. Though I have long since renounced any practical participation in youthful follies, 1 find my old breast glowing with ancient memories as I look at these sunny-haired maidens, and catch myself humming the old song 1 Her cheek was like a Katharine pear, The side that's next the sun.' It does an old fellow good to see them wrapped in splendid furs, enswathed with

scarlet, white, or sky-blue 'clouds,' becrowned with jaunty sealskin caps, enthroned amidst buffalo or wolf Bkin robes, with jolly fellows beside them deftly steering the fleet 'cutters,' faßt horses before ,them, the crisp air tremulous with laughter and tinkling sleighbells, and their hearts and faces all aglow with the excitement of swift motion through the dazzling sunshine, or under the keen cold moonlight of this whiteclothed land. Has not Poe sung— ' Hear the sledges witk the bells, Silver bella, What a troop of happy maidens, and their dear devoted swells, In the glorious excitement o£ an undisguised flirtation, How they speed along the (.rack, With their steeds, grey, brown, or black. Foam-flecked, and maaly racing through the wind bo sharp and bracing, To the tintinnabulation of the bells. The girls have cheeks like roses, but the men have purple noses, And a tingling of their toeses, Those most unhappy swells. But the fun is fast and furious, to stranger's eyes most curious. For the cavaliers are snaolring, And the air is thick with joking, And the laughing jubilation of the bells. See now, beneath the cloaking, her hand each swain is stroking, As he coaxes the coy damsel her affection to confess, And the maidens stream of pleasure Flows onward without measure, As he whispers, ' My heart's treasure, Won't you say the sweet word yes P ' To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells. Ah, how sweet the rippling laughter to the chaps that follow after, On foot, not having sledges, and quite destitute of belles. And when the drive is over, And the girls from under cover Of their furs creep out with laughter at their stiff, half .frozen swells, And to every amorous glance, Their heart with triumph dance, That's the most delightful peeling of the BELLES.'

"The quotation does not profess to be accurate, but as 1 have no book at hand it must pass."