Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America by William Cullen Bryant
page 108 of 345 (31%)
page 108 of 345 (31%)
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are barbarous enough as they actually exist, though, if they would but
speak with grammatical propriety, their forms of discourse are as commodious as venerable, and I would be content to see them generally adopted. I hope they will be slow to lay aside their better characteristics: their abhorrence of violence, and the peaceful and wholesome subjection in which, of all religious denominations, they seem to have best succeeded in holding the passions. In such remote and secluded neighborhoods as Lincoln, their sect will probably make the longest stand against the encroachments of the world. I perceived, however, that the old gentleman's son, who was with him, and, as I learned, was also a Quaker, had nothing peculiar in his garb. Before sunset we were in sight of those magnificent mountain summits, the Pico, Killington Peak, and Shrewsbury Peak, rising in a deep ultra-marine blue among the clouds that rolled about them, for the day was showery. We were set down at Rutland, where we passed the night, and the next morning crossed the mountains by the passes of Clarendon and Shrewsbury. The clouds were clinging to the summits, and we travelled under a curtain of mist, upheld on each side by mountain-walls. A young woman of uncommon beauty, whose forefinger on the right hand was dotted all over with punctures of the needle, and who was probably a mantua-maker, took a seat in the coach for a short distance. We made some inquiries about the country, but received very brief, though good-natured answers, for the young lady was a confirmed stammerer. I thought of an epigram I had somewhere read, in which the poet complimented a lady who had this defect, by saying that the words which she wished to utter were reluctant to leave so beautiful a mouth, and lingered long about the pearly teeth and rosy lips. We passed through a tract covered with loose stones, and the Quaker's |
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