From The New Yorker, February 1936 (Talk of the Town), during the run of Ethan Frome on Broadway:

We caught our cold in the National Theatre, waiting at the top of the coasting hill for Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver to start their long, sad descent. The chill which we took was brought on when we observed the remarkable manner in which these two grief-sprent lovers arranged themselves on the sled. Instead of sitting up, clutching each other (as Mrs. Wharton specified), or lying down belly-whoppers (a conceivable alternative), they startled everybody by reclining side by side on the sled, in the sort of classic semi-recumbent pose which we once saw Raymond Duncan take before a group of ladies. It is clear to us now why the Ethan and Mattie of the play didn't die. They didn't die because they most certainly fell off the sled near the top of the hill and never got within a mile of the old elm at the bottom. Not even Donna Fox could have fetched the elm that way, much less Raymond Massey.