The daughters are brought up in habits of virtue and industry; the strict notions of female delicacy, instilled into their minds from their earliest infancy, never entirely forsake them.  Even when one of these girls is decoyed from the peaceful dwelling of her parents, and left by her infamous seducer a prey to poverty and prostitution in a brothel at Philadelphia, her whole appearance is neat, and breathes an air of modesty:  you see nothing in her dress, language, or behaviour, that could give you any reason to guess at her unfortunate situation; (how unlike her unhappy sisters so circumstanced in England!) she by no means gives over the idea of a husband, she is seldom disappointed:  and, I am informed, often makes an excellent wife.

The chief amusement of the 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.