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 granddaughter, who proved to be a chatty person, told us a story which you may possibly have heard before.  “Where did you get all the stones with which you have made these substantial fences?” said a visitor to his host, on whose grounds there appeared no lack of such materials.  “Look about you in the fields, and you will see,” was the answer.  “I have looked,” rejoined the questioner, “and do not perceive where a single stone is missing, and that is what has puzzled me.”

Soon after reaching the highest elevation on the road, we entered the state of New Hampshire.  Our way led us into a long valley formed by a stream, sometimes contracted between rough woody mountains, and sometimes spreading out, for a short distance, into pleasant meadows; and we followed its gradual descent until we reached the borders of the Connecticut.  We crossed this beautiful river at Bellows Falls, where a neat and thriving village has its seat among craggy mountains, which, at a little distance, seem to impend over it.  Here the Connecticut struggles and foams through a narrow passage of black rocks, spanned by a bridge.  I believe this is the place spoken of in Peters’s History of Connecticut, where he relates that the water of the river is so compressed in its passage between rocks, that an iron bar can not be driven into it.