u know, is not a
very large village.

On Monday morning, we took the stage-coach at Middlebury for this place.
An old Quaker, in a broad-brimmed hat and a coat of the ancient cut,
shaped somewhat like the upper shell of the tortoise, came to hand in his
granddaughter, a middle-aged woman, whom he had that morning accompanied
from Lincoln, a place about eighteen miles distant, where there is a
Quaker neighborhood and a Quaker meeting-house. The denomination of
Quakers seems to be dying out in the United States, like the Indian race;
not that the families become extinct, but pass into other denominations.
It is very common to meet with neighborhoods formerly inhabited by
Quakers, in which there is not a trace of them left. Not far from
Middlebury, is a village on a fine stream, called Quaker Village, with not
a Quaker in it. Everywhere they are laying aside their peculiarities of
costume, and in many instances, also, their peculiarities of speech, which
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, th