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Bidford is not drunken now; it is only sleepy: a long steep street, with, at the top, the church and a beautiful old house, now cottages, once the Falcon Inn, where Shakespeare used to drink, and where the chair came from that they had seen at the birthplace yesterday; and at the foot the Swan Inn and the old bridge.
We lived in a little bit of a house a couple of blocks north of there; you know those old-fashioned frame cottages one of them. In the early days pa was a carpenter a boss-carpenter, to do him full justice; the town was growing, and after a while he began to do first-rate. But at the beginning ma did her own work, and I helped her. I swept and dusted, and wiped the dishes.
About one o'clock in the afternoon, we lay-to off a small village consisting of a few cottages, reposing at the base of the mountain which the Norwegian had indicated as our destination.
Our first object after we were on shore was to procure horses, that we might have a view of the country, as far as prudence would admit. We were surprised at starting to find such fine roads, lined with gardens and cottages, embowered in groves of cocoa-nut, bananas, and bamboos. Where the road was not shaded, arches of wood were raised to protect passengers from the heat of the sun.
The predominant note is the red of the chimneys and roofs and stray patches of brickwork, but the walls that go down to the water's edge are green below and full of rich browns above, and in many places the sides of the cottages are coloured with an ochre wash, while above them all the top of the cliff appears covered with grass.
A few isolated cottages, not far from the beetling brow of the cliff above, were their supposed abodes; but no one ever troubled them with a visit, and if they did, and found that they could gain no admittance, they imagined that the occupants had locked their doors for security, while they were busied with their labours in the field.
Sir Richard died on the 18th of September, 1689, at the age of eighty, arranging by his will that the profits of some cottages and land at Higham should be distributed, to the amount of two shillings a week, in bread, to the poor at St. Nicholas Church. The overplus was at the end of the year to be divided among four of the most ancient men, and four of the most ancient women of the parish.
Farmers have long since discovered that it is best to rent under a very large owner, whether personal as in this case, or impersonal as a college or corporation. A very large owner like this can be, and is, more liberal. He puts up sheds, and he drains, and improves, and builds good cottages for the labourers.
There is a small general store in Rabbit Hash, with postoffice and paint-shop attachment, and near by a tobacco warehouse and a blacksmith shop, with a few cottages scattered at intervals over the bottom.
Of course, in old times you had to live in them and couldn't have nice seaside cottages with balconies, because if you did your enemies shot off your head, or poured boiling oil on you; but nowadays they merely say horrid things behind your back, and it's just play-acting to build new ones.
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