A Farmer’s Life 
there was, Ben Fry by name, who bought fish at 
this “ market” at the “ Tumbledown Dick,” yet 
is said to have hawked it about Farnborough, in 
a cart, three days a week. Perhaps it is well not 
to imagine the fish on the third day. But it’s 
not amiss to imagine the quiet roads and lanes, 
and Ben Fry’s voice sounding along them. 
The “ Tumbledown Dick” was probably a 
place of more consequence then, before railways 
had brought London so much nearer. Important 
property sales were held there. Before Aldershot 
Camp and town changed all the neighbourhood 
it must have been the last house on the road for 
miles. In John Smith’s childhood, he dimly 
remembered, the old sign showed a man in top- 
boots, with pipe and glass, falling under a table. 
Soon after Aldershot Camp was founded an officer 
there contrived to get this altered to a painting 
of a hussar falling from his horse; but later this 
was replaced by an attempted reproduction of 
the earlier picture. John Smith used to attend 
the property sales at the ‘‘ Tumbledown,”’ not as 
a buyer—he never had any money for that. But 
as an inhabitant of the district he felt a need to 
know the values and the ownership of lands and 
houses. Several old sale-catalogues, marked in 
his writing with names and figures, are indicative 
enough of business interests, business chatter, in 
thin trickle of loquacity hovering about the ancient 
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