Sundry Speeches and Writings of William C. de Witt (Volume 1); Driftwood from Out the Current of a Busy Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881. Excerpt: ... Before I leave Saugerties for the exclusively scenic portion of my journey, let me say a word or two about the character of the people who inhabit these villages, these harvest fields and these road-side glens. Ulster county was principally settled by the Dutch, and the Dutch are still in the ascendant. A sturdy, unassuming and augmentative race, they present to the traveler little calculated to arrest immediate attention. Without inquisitiveness, and profoundly opposed to intermeddling, the farmer in the open field will hardly ever lift his eyes from the furrow through which he is driving the plow, to gaze upon your horses or peer into your face. And yet, if you rein up at his door, you will find the house of that same farmer full of substantial hospitality. The books, though, oftentimes few, which adorn his table, are always of the solid and valuable departments of literature, and the host himself is a man not perhaps of ready and captivating wit, but a thorough reasoner upon all political and philosophical subjects; interested in the great problems of government about which statesmen have written; excellently versed in the tenets and logic of the religious creeds of the world; and endeavoring always, by real, earnest, straightforward thought and deduction, to lift the veil of the future and descry something of the coming wants and assured destiny of his country. From Saugerties we turn more to the west. The country becomes alternately hilly and the road somewhat broken. The stone quarries, to which I have previously alluded, have gathered together a sufficient number of people to constitute a little village here and there, and these, together with the few old agricultural settlements, are all that interrupt the unobstructed lands of the farming distric...