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Updated: May 2, 2025
Each retiring speculator has left his stock-in-trade, along with the good-will, to his successor; and at the present moment it is a combination of shops, where everything you don't want is to be found in a state of dilapidation, together with a very hungry-looking proprietor, who, for want of customers upon whom to exercise his ingenuity, pulls away all day long upon the accordion to the tune of We're a' noddin'. The other end of Our Terrace has its butcher, its public-house, its grocer, and a small furniture-shop, doing a small trade, under the charge of a very small boy.
Having skinned my bird and put the skin out in the sun to dry, I took a stroll through the small town, and found it composed mostly of huts inhabited by Mestizos, with a tumble-down church and a weed-covered plaza. Around some of the houses were planted mango and orange trees, but there was a general air of dilapidation and decay, and not a single sign of industry or progress visible.
Their stucco composition may still be found as hard as stone, without a crack or flaw: the floors and ceilings of the Alhambra, the ancient palace of Grenada, have been comparatively uninjured by the neglect and dilapidation of nearly seven centuries; while their paint retains its colour so bright and rich as to be occasionally mistaken for mother-of-pearl.
Outside, the house had a distinction which no superficial dilapidation could mar; but inside distinction was almost lost in the commonplace, if not in actual ugliness. The double parlors on the right of the wide hall had been furnished in the complete vulgarity of the sixties; on the left was the library, which had long ago been taken by Mrs.
Disc. V. Pt. II. p. 234. Except under the dictate of a constraining inspiration, it is not easy to conceive how the master of such a work, at the time when he had brought it to perfection, and beheld it in its lustre, the labour of so much opulent magnificence and curious art, and designed to be 'exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all countries', should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and dilapidation, and that too under the 'opprobrium' of God's vindictive judgment upon it, nor to imagine how that strain of sinister prophecy, that forebodes of malediction, should be ascribed to him, if he had no such vision revealed.
The little gray cabin, with smoke curling from the stone chimney, had lost its look of dilapidation and disuse, yet there was nothing new that Columbine could see. The last quarter of the ascent of the slope, and the few rods across the level terrace, seemed extraordinarily long to Columbine. As she dismounted and tied Pronto her heart was beating and her breath was coming fast.
I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of sacrilege was lost at sea. Let us not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation.
The frame was out of repair and there were only traces left of former coats of paint. Of the picket fence which had once bounded her possessions in front, not even a post remained. Years before, the slats had begun to decay, until the dilapidation became an eyesore to even Miss Elizabeth herself.
Little and Grace went on to the next, and he smashed the roof in, and then the ceiling, and Grace and he were getting the people out, when the house they had just left melted away, all but a chimney-stack, which adhered in jagged dilapidation to the house they were now upon. They were now upon the last.
The townsmen of Orange, however, deserve credit for the substantial style in which they have repaired one end of it, to prevent farther dilapidation, and for the manner in which the road is diverted from it on both sides in a handsome sweep, leaving a green space in the middle, in which the arch stands.
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