"They will follow soon," said Morton; "they are not far off. There is no sanctuary from American enterprise."
"I know it is omnipotent at spoiling a landscape; but I hope that this one may escape,—at least if there is no mill privilege in the neighborhood."
"There is—an excellent one—at the outlet of the pond, beyond the three elms yonder. I prophesy that in five years there will be a brick factory on that meadow, with a row of one story houses for the operatives."
"It will be a scandal and a profanation. It is too beautiful for such base uses. But at least that old cedar tree, rooted in a cleft of the precipice, has found a safe sanctuary. There it was growing in King Philip's time; in its younger days it saw Indian wigwams standing on this bank; and there its offspring will grow after it, safe from Yankee axes."
"One cannot be sure of that. A time will come yet, when those rocks will be blasted to build a town hall, or open another railroad track."
"But they cannot build railroads and factories in the clouds. Our New England sunsets will still remain to remind one that there is an ideal side of life—something in it besides locomotives and cotton gins."
"There it is that you are wiser than we are. You are mistresses of a domain of which men, for the most part, know little or nothing."
"Pray what domain may that be?"
"One that is all mystery to me—a world of thoughts and sentiments which to most men is a cloudland, an undiscovered country, of which they may possibly recognize the existence, but of whose geography they know nothing."
"Why should they be more ignorant of it than women?"