Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America in a series of letters from that country to a friend in England during the years 1818, 1819, and 1820, published in New York, 1821.
p. 331 – April 1820, New Jersey
The winter; — those whom it likes, may like it. The season has its beauty and its pleasures, skies shining down upon sparkling snows, over which the light sleighs, peopled with the young and the gay, bound along to the chime of bells which the horses seem to bear well pleased. In country and city, this is the time of amusement; the young people will run twenty miles, through the biting air, to the house of a friend; where all in a moment is set astir; carpets up, music playing, and youths and maidens, laughing and mingling in the mazy dance, the happiest creatures beneath the moon.