This manner of
training vines gives the town quite a peculiar look, as though the
houses had been crowned with green.
As you walk through the silent streets, and pass the large Assembly
Hall, the church, and the hotel, it will occur to you that these people
had, when they founded their place, the advantage of a sensible
architect, for, while there is not the least pretense, all the building
is singularly solid and honest; and in the larger houses the roof-lines
have been broken and managed with considerable skill, so as to produce a
very pleasing and satisfactory effect. Moreover, the color of the bricks
used in building has chanced to be deep and good, which is no slight
advantage to the place.
Neatness and a Sunday quiet are the prevailing characteristics of
Economy. Once it was a busy place, for it had cotton, silk, and woolen
factories, a brewery, and other industries; but the most important of
these have now ceased; and as you walk along the quiet, shady streets,
you meet only occasionally some stout, little old man, in a short
light-blue jacket and a tall and very broad-brimmed hat, looking
amazingly like Hendrick Hudson's men in the play of Rip Van Winkle; or
some comfortable-looking dame, in Norman cap and stuff gown; whose
polite "good-day" to you, in German or English as it may happen, is not
unmixed with surprise at sight of a strange face; for, as you will
presently discover at the hotel, visitors are not nowadays frequent in
Economy.
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