e country girls in winter is sleighing, of which
they are passionately fond, as indeed are the whole sex in this country. I
never heard a woman speak of this diversion but with rapture. You have
doubtless read a description of a _sleigh_, or sledge, as it is
common in all northern countries, and can only be used on the snow. In
British America this amusement may be followed nearly all the winter; but
so far to the south as Pennsylvania, the snow seldom lies on the ground
more than seven or eight days together. The consequence is, that every
moment that will admit of sleighing is seized on with avidity. The tavern
and inn-keepers are up all night; and the whole country is in motion. When
the snow begins to fall, our planter's daughters provide hot sand, which
at night they place in bags at the bottom of the sleigh. Their sweethearts
attend with a couple of horses, and away they glide with astonishing
velocity; visiting their friends for many miles round the country. But in
large towns, in order to have a sleighing frolic in _style_, it is
necessary to provide a _fiddler_ who is placed at the head of the
sleigh, and plays all the way. At every inn they meet with on the road,
the company alight and have a dance. But I perceive I am _dancing_
from my subject, which I suppose you are by this time heartily tired of; I
shall therefore conclude, by assuring you,

I am

Yours sincerely, &c.

* * * * *

"There be also store of frogs, which in the spring time will chirp, and
whistle like birds: there be also toads, that will creep to the top of
trees, and sit there croaking, to the wonderment of strangers!"

"To a stranger walking for the first time in these woods during the
summer, this appears the land of enchantment: he hears a thousand noises,
without being able to discern from whence or from what animal they
proceed, but which are, in fact, the discordant notes of five different
species of frogs!"

_Philadelphia, April 27th, 1794._

DEAR FRIEND,

Previous to my coming to this country, I recollect reading the foregoing
passages, the first in a history of New England, published in London, in
the year 1671; and the other in a similar production of a later date.

Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these animals, I
confess the first frog _concert_ I heard in America was so much beyond any
thing I could conceive of the _powers_ of these _musicians_, that I was
truly as