Sleigh to School

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Four children ride in the box of a horse-drawn sled along with four milk cans. The driver holds the reins of the two horses. One child is perched on a can. Snow covers the ground and the hills in the background, and there is a tree on the left.The following is a recollection from the creator: "Sleigh to School. Winter furnished us with the greatest adventures of travel to and from school. There were days of walking in knee-deep snow, and arduous journeys through the stark, silent woods. The highlight of travel was to ride on the bobsleigh. A snowfall of two or three feet meant that the milkman would not be able to make it down the road to the farm. Our father would have to get the cans of milk up to the main road, a distance of over a mile. He would hitch the two white workhorses to the long bobsleigh and would load in the milk cans. Ralph and I would pile in; our father, dressed in his wool-lined coat, would take the reins, and with the breath steaming from the nostrils of the horses, we would make our way to the main road. We often had to stop to shovel our way through the deep drifts. On other days, if the snowplow had already cleared the road, we would glide over the packed snow with great style in the one-horse sleigh, bells ringing all the way to school.Arriving at school, we placed our winter coats and boots in the front vestibule, put our lunch pails on the shelf, and sometimes, before sitting down to work, made a treat for our winter lunch, snow mousse. Into a metal container we poured a mixture of sugar, chocolate syrup, eggs and cream, and then bury the container outside in the snow. At noon the mousse would be ready for dessert."