It was a big, green-enameled swan's-neck affair, a beautiful sleigh. They were five kids in their late teens and early twenties, and one of the girls, in a red-and-white knitted cap tied under her chin, began singing: Dashing through the snow! In a one-horse open sleigh! O'er the field we go! And then all ten of us, everyone but me knowing all the words, came in on Laughing all the way! To the exact rhythm of our horses' hoofs and the jounce of our bells, we lined it out: Bells on bobtail ring! Making spirits bright! What fun it is to ride and sing — and it was; oh, Lord, it was — a sleighing song tonight! Then we roared it: Jingle bells, jingle bells! Jingle all the way! Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh! For two blocks — people on the walks calling out to us, kids throwing snowballs at us — we sang. Beside me Julia's voice was high, a soprano, very clear, very sweet and lovely, the white mist of her breath punctuating every phrase. Maud was nearly inaudible, Aunt Ada surprisingly youthful and good, Jake a rumbling baritone; and I guess I was a sort of lost-in-the-shuffle tenor. At the corner the kids swung south. Waving and yelling at each other, we headed north toward Central Park, both sleighs continuing to sing as long as each could hear the other.

Felix caught up with us, and in the Park he took the lead, and we all flew along the curving roads with hundreds of other sleighs. Fast as we moved, sleighs raced past us, hoofs drumming, the runners on one side sometimes actually lifting from the snow on the curves. Some of the drivers carried what the others said were fish horns: brass horns they occasionally raised and blew into, producing a single mournful yet somehow exciting blast of brassy sound that hung in the air for a moment afterward. Ahead, Felix pulled over for a shot of the roadway, and we waited behind him as he focused the big red-leather-and-varnished-wood camera, the brass fittings gleaming in the winter light. It came out good, and when I saw it later I asked him for a copy, which he gave me. This is it, and I can't even look at it without smiling with pleasure.

Half a mile farther on Felix saw another shot he-wanted, and as we waited behind him and I saw what he was taking — the shot below — I agreed; he had a good eye. They didn't notice us; the mother was getting out a handkerchief for the boy on the sleigh; and I heard the child in the carriage call the older woman "Nanny."

While Felix was taking the shot I walked over to their sleigh. When he finished I told him I'd seen an apartment building across the Park at Seventy-second Street that I admired, and asked if he'd take a picture of it for me. "The Dakota," he said. "Sure! Only you take it," and he handed me the camera. I hesitated, but I did want to use it and thanked him, and he showed me how to load in a new dry-plate.

Halfway across the park I asked Jake to stop, and — Felix helping — I took the photo on the opposite page. I like it; it shows how alone the Dakota was. But I didn't allow too well for reflected light from the ice, and, embarrassingly, it's overexposed. There was a man in the middle foreground, for example, wearing a silk topper, and I don't know if you can see him. We moved on, closer to the Dakota, and — it was a simple camera, really, and a good one — I set it on a stone pillar for a time exposure because the light was failing, and I got a beauty: this one. I couldn't do better with a Leica, Graflex, or anything else, in fact.

On through the park then, and out, and far up past it out into actual open countryside — astoundingly, still on Manhattan Island — until finally we stopped at a big wooden inn called Gabe Case's. It was full dark now, the inn brilliant with light, shining out on the snow in long quartered rectangles, and the place was filled; there were surely fifty sleighs in a great outside shed, the horses tethered and blanketed.

Inside, every table was occupied, the place jammed, the roar of voices and laughter so loud it was almost impossible to talk. Felix had called to me, and I worked my way over to his group, losing mine. We had sandwiches and hot wine, standing up — there wasn't a table empty — talking a little over the roar, but mostly just grinning at each other out of sheer sparkling excitement and joy.

It was an extraordinary afternoon and night, worth a news story in the Times next morning, headed "ON THE ROAD" THOUSANDS OF MERRY REVELERS ENJOYING THE SLEIGHING, and it said:

Those persons who owned cutters, ancient sleighs, old piano-box sleds, or any kind of a conveyance on runners, and those who could afford to hire them and were able to sit in them yesterday behind high-bred trotters or horses of low degree, had an opportunity to enjoy themselves after a fashion of their own over the driveways in the Central Park or on the splendid avenues leading out of it. The sleighing was good through Broadway, Fifth-avenue, and all the avenues in the city where there are no street car tracks. The snow-fall gave to the roads the best covering of the season for sleighing, and thousands took advantage of it. A large number of noted horses were on the road, and merchants, bankers, politicians, and professional horsemen passed each other in jolly good humor.

Commissioner of Public Works Hubert O. Thompson, in a delicate cutter, was an object of much interest as he drove in a gentle manner a powerful horse. Commissioner of Jurors George Caulfield, driving a sorrel horse, showed Mr. Thompson the way into Gabe Case's shed, and the latter stepped from his cutter, and seemed to thank Mr. Caulfield for saving his life. Police Justice J. Henry Ford flew over the snow in a stylish cutter drawn by a fast horse, and was not persuaded to stop. John Murphy, the professional driver, sat behind his bay mare Modesty, and flew by like the wind. He was followed by Frank Work, with his team Edward and Swiveller; Joseph Doyle, with his wonderful mare Annie Pond; William Vassar, with Red and Black and Keno; John De Mott, in the most handsome cutter on the road, drawn by the bay gelding Charley; Samuel Sniffen, with his Blackwood Queen; Gen. J. Nay, with his Garryowen; Salvine Bradley, with his team Jack Slote and Hen Seaman; Ike Woodruff, with his Dan Smith; James Kelly, with his brown mare Codfish; Robert J. Dean, with a party in a large sleigh; and John Barry, with his sorrel gelding Gossip.

After dark, when the whole country was white and bright in the moonlight, and the street lamps for miles around seemed like so many lightning-bugs on parade, the fun was at its height, and great sleighs, crowded with laughing and singing young men and women, were rapidly moving in all directions….

We drove home through that night — the others had been waiting for me when we came out of Gabe Case's — and though a wind had come up and it was turning colder, we were snug under our robes, and we sang softly, "The Spanish Cavalier" and, very softly and slowly, "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me." In the park the snow sparkled, and below it the buildings of Fifth Avenue were awash and mysterious with moonlight, and we drove down through the city marveling. One scene we passed stayed in my mind, and much later I made a watercolor of it; on the opposite page is the scene as I remember it, and I wish I could really show the wonderful actuality of it.