"For the rest, there is a road wandering in an aimless way along the
hill-side, like a child at play who is going nowhere, and all along this
road are scattered every variety of dwelling, big and little, sombre and
gay, humble and pretentious, which the mind of man ever conceived
of,--and some of which I devoutly trust the mind of man will never again
conceive. There are solid substantial Dutch farm-houses, built of unhewn
stone, that look as though they were outgrowths of the mountain, which
nothing short of an earthquake could disturb; and there are fragile
little boxes that look as though they would be swept away, to be seen no
more forever, by the first winter's blast that comes tearing up the gap
as though the bag of Eolus had just been opened at West Point and the
imprisoned winds were off with a whoop for a lark. There are houses in
sombre grays with trimmings of the same; and there are houses in every
variety of color, including one that is of a light pea-green, with pink
trimmings and blue blinds. There are old and venerable houses, that look
as though they might have come over with Peter Stuyvesant and been
living at Wheathedge ever since; and there are spruce little sprigs of
houses that look as though they had just come up from New York to spend
a holiday, and did not rightly know what to do with themselves in the
country. There are staid and respectable mansions that never move from
the even tenor of their ways; and there are houses that change their
fashions every season, putting on a new coat of paint every spring; and
there is one that dresses itself out in summer with so many flags and
streamers that one might imagine Fourth of July lived there." Laicus;
or, the Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish, Lyman Abbott,1872.

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