Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/167

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CHAPTER VII.

"I WILL take mine ease at mine inn!"

What an element of coziness, hospitality, picturesqueness is introduced into the village by the inn! There is another side—but that we will not consider.

I know some villages from which the squire has banished the hostelry, and poor, forlorn, half-hearted places they seem to me. If there be a side to the village inn that is undesirable, I venture to think that the advantage of having one surpasses the disadvantages. What the squire has done in closing the inn he

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