'Diffidence,' not 'surliness'

A “Yankee peddler’’ in Connecticut, circa 1850.

“In spite of all that is said, and more especially written, about the crabbed New Englander, New Englanders, like all ordinary people, are nice. Their manner of proffering a favor is sometimes on the crusty side, but that is much more often diffidence than surliness.”

― Louise Dickinson Rich, in We Took to the Woods