THE COSY COTTAGE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 846, 18 June 1910, Page 11

THE COSY COTTAGE.

That Bishop Stretch was right last week in saying "tho day of big houses is gone" everyone will agree (writes "Christina" in the "Australasian"). K had been proposed in synod that the stipend of the popular bishop should be increased from c£l2oO odd to =£1000 odd— which was eventually done. It was during the discussion oil the point that Bishop Stretch made the above trite and true remark. The Newcastle bishop "lived in a court," it was said, but he declared: "I have no desire to live in a court. You put me into a court, and I have lo Itcep the place up, not for myself, for my successor, it takes a lot of money. 1 would rather live in a collage." This udver.se attitude of- the well-to-do and of those in high places towards big houses is growing year by year. No now big houses seem to be going up, in Sydney at any rale, even the wealthiest preferring everything bijou, compact, convenient, and easy .to manage. The ten-, dency of people who own big houses, by inheritance or from whatever cause, is to sell out and quit. The upkeep, the eternal gardener and household servants' question, the responsibility and "everlasting fag" of a big house.- constitute too heavy a weight in these restless, pleasureloving, travel-smitten days. "Who wants to bo leg-roped to stones and mortar?" a-ikeil a ia*liiomtble ivo/na/i Hit oilier day, who, having sold her mansion years ago, was just off to Egypt and England for the dozenth time. Hampered and ruled by lares et penates is what she absolutely refuses lo be. She won't even buy a picture-frame now, as it would only be adding to her accumulation of rubbish, as slio terms a choice collection of valuable silver heirlooms. Palatial residences in these days (continues "Christina") are simply turned into boardinghouses. Aud admirably tliej suit tho '.purpose. In Pott's Point, Darlinghurst, in North Sydney, and in most of the easily-accessible harbour bays, the .finest houses are so utilised. Frequentlychanging lodgers dine in the (once) gilded ballroom, lounge in the dining-room, loaf in the unweeded garden and on'tlie tennis green, and scatter matches aud cigar 'butts on the wide flagged verandahs, which have seen better days and perhaps more refined noeiety. The boarders enjoy comforts and space which in oldiufihioned, home-loving days could .never have been theirs at the price. The original owners of these lovely houses are living meanwhile in. a bandbox or two which they dignify tiy the -name of a flat, set round by dozens of other people in more bandboxes, overlooking a city street, where trams perchance cease not, night or day. They dare not venture out of their snuggery, which is parlour,' writing-room, meal and reception room (til in one, witfiout a hat oh and otherwise ready for tho .road, as Airs. X from the flat opposite (i.e., over the pas-sage-way) will be "spying as usual." There is no garden, and no 1 room to movo; to como in with wet boots on is a crime (and no wonder); yet the occu-. pants of these corners vow they enjoy this mode of existence, and wouldn't go back to a big house for anything in the world.