If Unsuccessful Through Want Of Industry, &C., They Often Sell Off, And Emigrate To Kentucky, Or Some Other New Country Seven Or Eight Hundred Miles To The S.W., And Begin The World Again As Back Settlers.

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.

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.

To an Englishman lately arrived in this country there are other phenomena, equally curious; as _fire-flies, night-hawks &c.;_ but, above all, such tremendous peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, as can be conceived only by those who have been in southern latitudes.

I have often thought, if an enthusiastic _cockney_, of weak nerves, who had never been out of the sound of Bow bell, could suddenly be conveyed from his bed, in the middle of the night, and laid, fast asleep, in an american swamp, he would, on waking, fancy himself in the infernal regions: his first sensation would be from the stings of a myriad of mosquitoes; waking with the smart, his ears would be assailed with the horrid noises of the frogs; on lifting up his eyes he would have a faint view of the night-hawks, flapping their ominous wings over his devoted head, visible only from the glimmering light of the fire-flies, which he would naturally conclude were sparks from the bottomless pit. Nothing would be wanting at this moment to complete the illusion, but one of those dreadful explosions of thunder and lightning, so _extravagantly_ described by Lee, in Oedipus:

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 9 of 34
Words from 8490 to 9503 of 35016