Their diversion in winter is riding sleighs about three or four miles out of town where they have houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, and some go to friends houses, who handsomely treat them. Mr. Burroughs carried his spouse and daughter and myself out to one Madam Dowes a gentlewoman that lived at a farmhouse who gave us a handsome entertainment of five or six dishes and choice beer and metheglin, etc, all which she said was the produce of her farm. I believe we met fifty or sixty sleighs that day; they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they will turn out of the path for none except a loaded cart. There were few sleighs at that date in Boston. Sixty-four years later, in 1768, a young English officer, Alexander Macraby, wrote thus to his brother of the pleasures of sleighing:-- You can never have had a party in a sleigh or sledge I had a very clever one a few days ago. Seven sleighs with two ladies and two men in each proceeded by fiddlers on horseback set out together upon a snow of about a foot deep on the roads to a public house, a few miles from town where we danced, sung, romped and eat and drank and kicked away care from morning till night, and finished our frolic in two or three side-boxes at the play. You can have no idea of the state of the pulse seated with pretty women mid-deep in straw, your body armed with furs and flannels, clear air, bright sunshine, spotless sky, horses galloping, every feeling turned to joy and jollity. That older members of society then, as now, did not find sleighing parties altogether alluring, we learn from this sentence in a letter of Hannah Thompson written to John Mifflin in 1786:-- This Slaying match Mr Houston of Houston St gave his Daughters, Dear Papa, Dear Papa, do give us a slaying--he at last consented, told them to get ready and dress themselves warm, which they accordingly did and came running. We are ready papa. He ordered the Servants to have some burnt wine against they came back. He desir’d them to step upstairs with him before they went. As soon as they got in an Attick chamber, he threw up all the windows and seated them in two old Arm Chairs and began to whip and Chirrup with all the Spirit of a Slaying party. And after he kept them long enough to be sufficiently cold he took them down and call’d for the Mulled Wine and they were very glad to set close to the Fire and leave Slaying for those who were too warm. This I quote to execrate the memory of Mr. Houston and express my sympathy for his daughters.