As for the town, it has perhaps twenty-five hundred people-- Walloons and Flemish folk--living in tall, bleak, stone houses built flush with the little crooked streets.

Invariably these houses are of a whitish gray color; almost invariably they are narrow and cramped- looking, with very peaky gables, somehow suggesting flat-chested old men standing in close rows, with their hands in their pockets and their shoulders shrugged up.
A canal bisects one corner of the place, and spanning the river there are--or were--three bridges, one for the railroad and two for foot and vehicular travel.

There is a mill which overhangs the river--the biggest building in the town--and an ancient gray convent, not quite so large as the mill; and, of course, a church.

In most of the houses there are tiny shops on the lower floors, and upstairs are the homes of the people.

On the northern side of the stream every tillable foot of soil is under cultivation.