Evening star., 1901-12-21

Total ............................ $40 %
Multiply the above sum total by fifty
| two and You will find as we did that the
result is 500 a year. or $3.50 apiece Now,
of course, considering what We had for this
tiny sum the purchasing powers Of s52o
seems unbelievable; but, / promised
by saying, living in an English village is
very cheap and wages are most moderate.
The stout strong, rosy, respectful young
woman who cooked and washed for us and
did, all the heavy housework was supreme
ly content with her eight shillings a week
and keep, and in the kitchen not a drop OF
grease nor a grain of salt went TO waste.
She baked our bread in our brick oven
twice a week, turned the crusts into 'totty'
and delicious puddings and saved every
meat bone for the season when soap boil
ing and beer brewing came around.
From May to October the price of such
food as We could not raise in our garden
or pigeon loft was absurdly low. Butter
the twelve months around was twenty
cents pound eighteen eggs were sold for
twenty-four cents, a big roasting chicken
was worth forty-five cents, a five-cent FISH
gave us a dainty dish for two meals a
three-cent caulifower provided an ample
dish for four persons and a pennys worth
of mustard and cress gave us more salad
than We could eat at sitting. Our gar
den, however, until Christmas, kept us
supplied with admirable fresh vegetables
and our fruit bushes and trees bore such
ample crops that we preserved enough Jars
of jelly and marmalade to sweeten our
winter luncheons.
Meantime the pony not only took us
about the country to tea drinkings, flower
shows, church festivals, garden parties,
ETC., but earned the major portion of his
board and keep. One day every week he
trotted villagers load OF cabbages to the
market town, and got a pasture privilege
in return .and in the harvest season he
worked out three days out of every seven
and earned hay enough for the winter.
Developing a Business.
AFTER the year Of experiments and after
1 had countless opportunities to rent my
cottage to visitors, enthusiastic over the
picturesque charm and economical comfort
Of my way Of living. 1 ventured to invest
little capital had in fitting up a couple
of tiny old homesteads and Offering them
for rent. In ten days most desirable ten
ants were In residence. One was an Amer
lean authoress who wanted a quiet place
in which to do a summers work; the other
was a London artist and his wife. They
came to spend three months, and they
stayed eight.
I'm the winter the cottages were snap
ped up by the well-to-do young men who
wanted inexpensive shooting boxes. Every
summer now the artist and the authoress
come back to those same cottages, and so
glibly did they relate their village ex-
perience that before the second year was
out had six cottages on my list, and four
of them were rented the year round to the
same people. Now that L own pretty near
ly all the village I've found it worth nv
while to take over the lease of the ancient
and tiny Cock Inn ana turn IL into a sort
of picturesque club house for cottage resi-
dents
THE vicar and l are together in this
scheme for selling hot and cold soft drinks
in the tap room and restoring the old bowl
ing green, but in no way interfering with
the comfort and convenience of the natives /.
Money is to be made out of the village by
retaining all Its features OF simplicity and
nd 20 fer riflO fn ha nf
pie of small means, and as an enterprise
conducted on this scale / can see both
profit and pleasure in the manipulation OF
just such hitherto sadly deprecated real
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