The Sports of Winter

Publication Year: 1934.

—10 ... The Sports of Winter. Ninety plates by Samivel. 4 to.

Paris. Delagrave, 1933. Price Fr. 25.

The author, who has already depicted the pleasures of Alpinism in a nerve-shattering volume, now turns his attention to the social and technical aspects of winter sport. Several prominent skiers, members of the American Alpine Club, were approached to review his latest book, but report, after having seen it, that they are under physicians’ care for convulsions. Overcome by laughter, these experts fail to see that Samivel is in deadly earnest. No one before him has used an air-brush to make snow look so soft and harmless, but there is lurking peril nevertheless, at least for our old friends, Baculot and Samovar, who have for the season deserted the hazards of rope and axe for the giddy swoopings of skis and skates. It is not nature in the raw that troubles them, for that is mild enough, but these beginners are constantly in difficulty from the various fauna, human and otherwise, that crosses their path. That is Samivel’s message. Only when his heroes are alone with their perfect snow and powdered trees does their adventuring reach happy climax.

Now you will have to see this for yourself; but meanwhile what are we to do with our fellow club members who have nearly perished in mirth? H. S. K., the old ski-maestro of Minneapolis, is one of these, else this book would have been reviewed by him instead of by

J. M. T.