Amusement for the Million--A 2.40 Sleigh-ride.
Sleigh-riding is an amusement to which I was never partial, for I cannot appreciate the pleasure there is, in a man's deliberately freezing his feet, and congealing his fingers into digital icicles; and for my own part unless there was some unusual charm beyond the ride itself, I would as soon think of seeking an evening's amusement by sitting a given number of hours on a frozen mill pond with my pedal extremities stuck through a hole in the ice into the water below. And in the city there are even more discomforts attending this popular penance than in the open country.
The man who would trustingly endeavor to draw a sherry cobbler out of a clam-shell, make a gin sling from cold potatoes, lard oil from railroad spikes, or a mint-julep out of sea weed and chestnut burs--or hopefully essay the concoction of a satisfactory oyster stew from jack-knife-handles and bootlegs, is the only person I can conceive of, sanguine enough to anticipate an evening's pleasure from a city sleigh-ride.
I can readily conceive that in the country, give a man a fast team, a light sleigh, a clear sky, a straight road, a pretty girl, plenty of snow, and a good tavern with a bright ball-room and capital music waiting at his journey's end, the frigid amusement may be made endurable--possibly, to a man enthusiastic enough to seek for pleasure with the thermometer at zero, even desirable.
But in New York, we can't get an unadulterated country sleigh-ride, any more than we can get genuine country milk--neither will bear importation. In both cases some unbargained-for dash of cold water interferes with the purity of the article, and nips in the bud our delusive anticipations.
The conditions necessary to a thorough-bred sleigh-ride can never be present in a great city. In the first place, the snow (an item of some importance) cannot even reach the earth unsullied; it is met in its quiet journey by some aspiring chimney, some impertinent roof, or ambitious spire, all dust-covered and smoke-begrimed, or by some other of the spontaneous nuisances indigenous to a city, and is robbed of its maiden purity, as its first welcome to the lower world--then, mixed with ashes, soot, and pulverulent nastiness of every sort--tainted with dainty perfumes of gas, garbage, markets and slaughter-houses, besides all the volatile filth of six hundred thousand perspiring bipeds (not mentioning hogs, horses, rats, dogs, and jackasses), it comes from upper air to us, expectant citylings--and even then we have to take it second-hand, for it is stopped in its airy transit by countless awnings, the tops of innumerable houses, stages, drays, and hackney-coaches, and the hats and outside apparel of the peripatetic multitude--from all which meddling mediums, it is transferred to the cold charity of the stony pavement, where the first installment, in sorrow for its sullied purity, dissolves itself in discontented tears, and sulkily seeks, by some narrow down-hill track, its grave--the common sewer.