Should you not happen to want to go faster, pretend you do, if you are not above such childishness.
No amount of wanting, of course, will affect your speed, but this mental attitude will enormously increase your steadiness by removing the fatal tendency to lean backwards.
Similarly, to wish to go slower will not make you do so, but will very likely be the sole cause of a fall.
Some such sentence as "This is very slow," repeated to oneself as one goes over any difficult ground, is a more potent spell than might be imagined.
If you wish to reduce your speed or stop, you can, as a rule, if you are not going fast--and sometimes even if you are--do so without altering your course, by making one or both skis move more or less broadside on. Although I am only now about to describe the different ways in which this may be done, you should begin to learn them at the very outset--or even _before_ you try straight-running, if you are very nervous--and should certainly not attempt to run very fast until you can brake perfectly by every method described in this chapter, and are fairly proficient in the turns to be described later on.
_Single-Stemming or Half-Snow-Plough._--For this find a moderate slope on which the snow is neither very soft nor so hard that you cannot possibly traverse it without side-slipping--an ordinary practice-ground in its normal state is just the thing.
Stand with your skis horizontally across the slope; weight the lower one; lift the upper, and place it pointing steeply enough downhill to slide perfectly freely, with its tip quite close to the other's, but far enough behind it for the upper foot to be exactly above the lower one (Fig. 28).
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Single-stemming or half-snow-plough.
_Going._ _R._ Weighted and edged. _L._ Unweighted and flattened.]
Now lean towards the upper leg, and bend it until your weight is on it, facing towards the point of the upper ski and edging it. Then, keeping the lower leg in exactly the same position, bend its ankle outwards, and almost, _but not quite_ (see p. 83), flatten the ski. The flattening of the ski will release you, and you will slide off in the direction of the upper ski's point, pushing the lower ski, which must still remain horizontal, forwards and sideways through the snow--_stemming_ with it in fact. You can go as slowly as you like, or as fast as the conditions permit, according as you keep the stemming ski more edged and weighted or less. You can stop suddenly by throwing your whole weight on to the stemming ski, facing round towards its point, and quickly bringing the upper ski beside it and forward to the normal position.