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 astonished. This _performance_ was _al fresco_, and took place on
the night of the 18th instant, in a large _swamp_, where there were at
least ten thousand _performers_; and I really believe not two _exactly_ in
the same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions or
shades of semitones. An hibernian musician, who, like myself, was present
for the first time at this _concert_ of _antimusic_, exclaimed, "By Jasus
but they stop out of tune to a _nicety!"_
I have been since informed by an _amateur_, who resided many years in this
country, and made this species of _music_ his peculiar study, that on
these occasions the _treble_ is performed by the tree-frogs, the smallest
and most _beautiful_ species; they are always of the same colour as the
bark of the tree they inhabit, and their note is not unlike the chirp of a
cricket: the next in size are our _counter tenors_; they have a note
resembling the _setting_ of a _saw_. A still larger species sing _tenor_;
and the _under part_ is supported by the bull-frogs; which are as large as
a man's foot, and _bellow_ out the _bass_ in a tone as loud and sonorous
as that of the animal from which they take their name.
