Domestic comfort and kindly charity sat enthroned in every room of these Dutch homes. Daniel Denton wrote of them as early as 1670:—

In these neighborly homes thrift and simple plenty and sober satisfaction in life had full sway; and these true and honorable modes of living lingered long, even to our own day. On the outskirts of a great city, within a few miles of the centre of our greatest city, still stand some of the farmhouses of Flatbush, whose story has been told con amore by one to the manner born. These old homesteads form an object-lesson which we may heed with profit to-day, of the dignity, the happiness, the beauty that comes from simplicity in every-day life.