“The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy on its low walls. It was one of the houses that seemed firm-rooted in the ground, as if they were two-thirds below the surface, like icebergs. The front door stood hospitably open in expectation of company, and an orderly vine grew at each side; but our path led to the kitchen door at the house-end, and there grew a mass of gay flowers and greenery, as if they had been swept together by some diligent garden broom into a tangled heap.”
Sarah Orne Jewett in “The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories”