Up our hill straggle the more ambitious houses, that have shaken off
the dust from their feet, or their foundations, and surrounded
themselves with green grass, and are shaded with trees, and are called
"places." There are the Marchbanks places, and the "Haddens," and the
old Pennington place. At these houses they dine at five o'clock, when
the great city bankers and merchants come home in the afternoon train;
down in the town, where people keep shops, or doctors' or lawyers'
offices, or manage the Bank, and where the manufactories are, they eat
at one, and have long afternoons; and the schools keep twice a day.

We lived in the town--that is, Mr. and Mrs. Holabird did, and their
children, for such length of the time as their ages allowed--for
nineteen years; and then we moved to Westover, and this story began.

They called it "Westover," more or less, years and years before; when
there were no houses up the hill at all; only farm lands and pastures,
and a turnpike road running straight up one side and down the other,
in the sun. When anybody had need to climb over the crown, to get to
the fields on this side, they called it "going west over"; and so came
the name.

We always thought it was a pretty, sunsetty name; but it isn't
considered quite so fine to have a house here as to have it below the
brow. When you get up sufficiently high, in any sense, you begin to go
down again. Or is it that people can't be distinctively genteel, if
they get so far away from the common as no longer to well overlook it?

Grandfather Holabird--old Mr. Rufus,--I don't say whether he was my
grandfather or not, for it doesn't matter which Holabird tells this