The Delectable Mountains by Arthur Willis Colton

He bore the name of Adam Wick. There seemed to be something primitive in his temperament to fit it. By primitive we mean of such times as may have furnished single-eyed passions that did not argue. He was a small, thin, stooping man, with a sharp nose and red-lidded eyes. Sarah Wick, his daughter, was a dry-faced woman of thirty, and lived with him.

His house stood on a hill looking over the village of Preston Plains, which lay in a flat valley. In the middle of the village the church-steeple shot up tapering and tall.