Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad

"The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Perhaps you don't know
what an old resident I am."

"How old, I wonder," he murmured, looking at her with a slight smile.
Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful by the mobile intelligence of
her face. "We can't give you your ecclesiastical court back again; but
you shall have more steamers, a railway, a telegraph-cable--a future
in the great world which is worth infinitely more than any amount
of ecclesiastical past. You shall be brought in touch with something
greater than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a place on
a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the world. If it had been a
thousand miles inland now--most remarkable! Has anything ever happened
here for a hundred years before to-day?"