deserves to be the joy of the whole earth.

A village I have called it. It certainly is neither town nor city.
There is a little centre where there is a livery stable, and a
country store with the Post Office attached, and a blacksmith shop,
and two churches, a Methodist and a Presbyterian, with the promise
of a Baptist church in a lecture-room as yet unfinished. This is the
old centre; there is another down under the hill where there is a
dock, and a railroad station, and a great hotel with a big bar and
generally a knot of loungers who evidently do not believe in the
water-cure. And between the two there is a constant battle as to
which shall be the town. 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