Algernon Blackwood

“ The ski for hire in hotels or village shops are a battered and indifferent chattel at the best, and at the worst a very obvious invitation to various kinds of disaster. The hirer, moreover, pays in a single season probably the cost of two new and perfect pairs. Those who, with more foresight but no better judgment, take a little extra trouble and go to the big winter-sport emporiums in towns like Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchatel, etc., gain little advantage on the other hand. ”

“ It betrays itself in the nip of the air after sundown, the mist that rises over the meadows with the dusk, the brighter eyes of the stars Two months more and the music of the winds will be set to another key. ”

“ For hundreds of us, the number increasing with every year, the thought brings pictures of snowy slopes lying in dazzling sunshine beneath skies of cloudless blue. The snow throws up a sort of advance mirage, and with the picture and the dream there rises too a curious shape that is a symbol of it all. ”

“ Patience and great skill, as well as love and passion, go to the making of fine ski, and I can only compare in my mind the relief I might have felt, after playing for years upon a five-pound factory fiddle, had I suddenly tumbled upon the cottage of some Guarnerius or Amati at Cremona making perfect things of beauty for the sheer love of making them.
A grave-faced man with iron grey hair and eyes that rarely smile (how slowly one learns to distrust that trick of facile smiling behind a counter!) , he keeps an ironmongery shop in a little watch-making village of the Jura called Ste. ”

“ Your toes will not be gripped in a sort of thumbscrew, nor will the foot be so loose that the boot moves sideways without carrying the ski with it. Boot and ski will move as one piece. Also, you will be able to kneel and pray with ease and comfort therefore fall, too, with safety at top speed as well. ”

“ And what lover of outdoor life does not welcome these little detailed duties with the zest of true joy: packing away the implements of the season when it dies and working with keen anticipation over those next in use? ”

“ The ski for hire in these emporiums are probably the least satisfactory article for hire in the whole world. In the room at the back of the shop devoted to that purpose an apprentice hurriedly hammers in the iron clamps that hold the boot firm by the toes. The hirer or purchaser pense que ca va bien because it feels secure, and goes off with an article, highly overpaid, that either turns out to be so loose that effective curving on a slope is impossible, or else so tight that the root of his big toe is sore and bruised at the first tumble and remains so till far into the following summer ”

“ Complete your business as briefly as your knowledge will permit you, and then, a little later, when you race across the sunlit slopes, wondering why you curve and steer so easily, and fall so much less than in previous years, admit gratefully that in these days of dishonesty and humbug you are glad to have found a man who will not impose upon your ignorance, nor take your money for an article which, as the idealists say, is “not what it appears to be.” ”

“ He will tell you in his grave, enthusiastic way the advantages of oak and ash and beautiful swift hickory, for he knows the distinctive values of the woods for speed and durability, as you may know the values of your stocks and shares, your stables or your motorcars. ”

“ And ski, in particular, repay painstaking care and trouble. They run fishing-rods very close in this respect. The carelessness and ignorance of the ordinary holiday skier are dearly paid for in the terms of delay, exhaustion, tiresome and tiring falling, and perhaps of broken bones. ”

“ The consequence is that he buys a strip of slow wood with the grain running the wrong way, un-oiled most likely since it left the factory six months before, cheap straps (with peau de bouc doing duty for peau de porc) that freeze stiff and turn unmanageable at the touch of Zero, and fastenings that open at the slightest inducement⁠—probably in mid-descent and leave his foot loose and wobbling upon an express train he cannot control or guide. ”