However, we got onto the thing somehow,
and away we went down the slide. The slide was all right and the
inclined plane was all right, so we made the descent and the ascent all
right, soaring over the brook like a bird, but the landing on the far
side was all wrong. We hit the snowbank like a battering ram, the snow
piling up in front of us as hard as stone; the shock was terrific! Mr.
Hosmer got the worst of it as he catapulted into the drift, while I
alighted in a heap on his shoulders. He scrambled out of the drift on
all fours, concerned only with learning whether I was badly hurt. On my
assurance that unless his back and legs and arms were broken, there was
no damage done, he straightened up and declared he was unhurt but
dreadfully humiliated. "How could a man be such a condemned idiot as to
plunge head-first against a barricade like that?" This was the question
suggested to his mind, only he did not say "condemned idiot" exactly,
but he apologized for the emphatic words he did use, and as they do not
look well in print, they need not be repeated.
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