Negroes shouting, chains rattling, snow flying back from sixteen pounding hoofs, sled cutting through the snow like a ship at sea, and a little darkey shooting out behind at every bounce over a rough place! "Hurrah!" cried Harry, holding tight to an upright pole.

"Isn't this splendid!" "Splendid! It's glorious!" shouted Tom.

"It's better than being a pi--" And down he went on his knees, as the big sled banged over a stone in the road, and Josephine's Bobby was bounced out into a snow-drift under a fence.
Whether Tom intended to say a pirate or a pyrotechnic, was never discovered; but, in six minutes, there was only one of the small darkies left on the sled.

The men, and this one, John William Webster, hung on to the poles as if they were glued there.
As for Polly, she was carried along faster than she ever went before in her life.

She jumped, she skipped, she galloped, she slid, she skated; sometimes sitting down, and sometimes on her feet, but flying along, all the same, no matter how she chose to go.
And so, rattling, shouting, banging, bouncing; snow flying and whips cracking, on they sped, until John William Webster's pole came out, and clip! he went heels over head into the snow.
But John William had a soul above tumbles.