Best of all, perhaps, because they have plenty of space around them, are the unpainted gambrel-roofed houses on the outskirts of the town. Now and then you find one where the shingles that cover the house from top to bottom have weathered a silver gray. Here and there the shingles have curled a trifle, so that they look like the bark of a shagbark walnut tree, in no danger of flying away with the wind, but making the house look crusted, picturesque. And there are some gabled houses where the long slope of the roof has sagged a little, just enough to make a place for moss and shadows, but not enough to look fallen in.
Barbara and I did not find all these the first day, or the next. We spent a good deal of time scouting over the moors, among the bayberry bushes and the pointed red cedars. Now and then we came upon a cranberry bog, hidden away behind what one geologist calls the "tumbled hills of Plymouth."
It was Alexander who showed us the best Colonial mansion. The frame was got out in England, and brought over in 1754, and, tradition says, was put upside down. It belonged to the Winslows—not the Edward Winslow who wrote "Good News From New England" in 1624, but a later branch of the family. The Winslow family seems to have prospered steadily in the early days—one of the cases where, in the elder Winslow's own words, "religion and profit jump together, which is rare."
"I want to show you the Winslow house," said Alexander; "the house where Emerson was married."
"I think we passed it on the corner of North and Winslow," said I. "Isn't it the fine square one, painted yellow and white, with the carving of fruit around the doorways?"
"That's it," admitted Alexander placidly, "but you don't know that house just by going past it on the street."
He led us down North Street to Winslow, and found the point where we could get the best view.
Old Plymouth Doorway