Theodore Winthrop

“ The father so charmed him that he felt himself, for his sake, taking a very tender fraternal interest in the young lady. It was so easy to picture her in her chamber, not a mile away, looking tearfully for help toward the hills. It was so easy to fancy her face, — her father’s, with the bloom of youth instead of the shades of sorrow; and her character, — her father’s, with all this gentleness that perhaps weakened him, in her but sweet womanliness. Peter Skerrett perceived to the full the romance of the adventure. He frequently felt the undeveloped true lover in him grow restive. ”

“ It is a bit of the world worth seeing, that bossy belt of latitude between Fishkill and Brothertoft Manor. There is a very splendid pageant to behold there in the halcyon days of October, the ruddy, the purple, the golden, when every tree is a flame, or a blush, or a dash of blood or deep winy crimson on the gray rocks of the mountains. The Hudson Highlands do not wrangle about height with the Alps; but they content themselves with wearing a more gorgeous autumn on their backs than any mountains on the globe. Go and see! Frost paints as bravely now as it did in 1777, and it is safer to travel. ”

“ If Edwin Brothertoft and Peter Skerrett could have travelled by daylight through the Highlands, then this narrative, marching with them, might have seen what fine things they saw, and told of them. But they went cautiously by night. They saw little but the stars overhead and the faint traces of their shy path. They were not distracted by grand views. Nature is a mere impertinence to men who are filled with a purpose. Fortunately, these intense purposes do not last a lifetime. Minds become disengaged, and then they go back, and make apologies to Nature for not admiring her. ”