In the village houses lights are rapidly flitting from chamber to chamber, and if we pass along the side paths we shall hear gay laughs, and merry screams, and the sounds of hurried preparation. At each door stands a gayly adorned sleigh, a perfect nest of bear-skins and buffalo-robes. The impatient horses stamp and chafe, and the merry sound of sleigh-bells chimes in with the ring of the blacksmith’s anvil. Around the piazzas of the hotel a crowd of the villagers is assembled. The boys and loafers are in a state of extreme excitement. Hark! A whoop—a hurrah from the stable-yard in the rear!—a sharp, clear crack of a whip! Hi! hi! Then a plunging and trampling. Another hurrah, and a fierce jangling of a hundred varied toned bells! Around the corner it comes! The boys and loafers shout again—six horses, rearing, pitching, plunging, rush with a wide sweep from out the lane, dragging after them a huge, open, omnibus sleigh. As the great ark ranges in front of the hotel, and its mad team subsides into comparative quiet, forth issue from the thronged piazzas crowds of village belles and beaux. Can it be that so many may find room aboard the sleigh, capacious as it is? Leave that to the Genius who presides over expeditions of this sort. In a sleigh, large or small, there is always room for one more. In the meantime the doors of the private dwellings have been opened, and from each emerges a beshawled, bemuffed, behooded, and overshod damsel—or two or three perhaps. Their happy beaux, clad in overcoats of pilot-cloth, in seal-skin caps, red worsted leggings, and buckskin gloves, escort them to the sleighs. The procession is formed in front of the hotel. Twenty sleighs, besides the teeming omnibus. The last in the line is a crockery crate, mounted upon a rude pair of runners and hitched behind a tandem team. The leader is a three-year old colt, wild and but half broken, and now, crazy with the noise, he is kicking and plunging like mad. In the crate stands the dare-devil of the village; a rich, handsome, graceless, good-natured scamp—the darling of the girls, the marvel of the boys, the terror of the piously disposed, and the favorite of all. He prefers to ride alone. Now all is ready—the band strikes up—the driver of the omnibus stands erect and tightens his reins—crack, goes the long whiplash—the horses plunge and start, the snow creaks, the bells jingle, the boys and loafers hurrah, the beaux laugh as the girls scream, and away flies the long caravan, like an express train, down the broad street, thundering, cracking, screaming, laughing. They turn the corner, all but the daredevil and his crockery crate, _they_ are upset in a snow-drift, but before the army of boys and loafers can reach the scene of the mishap, all is right side up again, and the last seen of dare-devil he is driving by the whole train, his frantic leader touching the snow only once in a rod.