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museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had
     no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a
mathom
. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were
     of that sort.
    Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or
     to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without
     them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well
     and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though slow to quarrel, and for sport killing nothing that
     lived, they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms. They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed
     and sure at the mark. Not only with bows andarrows. If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to get quickly under cover, as all trespassing beasts knew very well.
    All Hobbits had originally lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed, and in such dwellings they still felt most at
     home; but in the course of time they had been obliged to adopt other forms of abode. Actually in the Shire in Bilbo’s days
     it was, as a rule, only the richest and the poorest Hobbits that maintained the old custom. The poorest went on living in
     burrows of the most primitive kind, mere holes indeed, with only one window or none; while the well-to-do still constructed
     more luxurious versions of the simple diggings of old. But suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels (or
smials
as they called them) were not everywhere to be found; and in the flats and the low-lying districts the Hobbits, as they multiplied,
     began to build above ground. Indeed, even in the hilly regions and the older villages, such as Hobbiton or Tuckborough, or
     in the chief township of the Shire, Michel Delving on the White Downs, there were now many houses of wood, brick, or stone.
     These were specially favoured by millers, smiths, ropers, and cartwrights, and others of that sort; for even when they had
     holes to live in, Hobbits had long been accustomed to build sheds and workshops.
    The habit of building farmhouses and barns was said to have begun among the inhabitants of the Marish down by the Brandywine.
     The Hobbits of that quarter, the Eastfarthing, were rather large and heavy-legged, and they wore dwarf-boots in muddy weather.
     But they were well known to be Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed was shown by the down that many grew on their
     chins. No Harfoot or Fallohide had any trace of a beard. Indeed, the folk of the Marish, and of Buckland, east of the River,
     which they afterwards occupied, came for the most part later into the Shire up from south-away; and they still had many peculiar
     names and strange words not found elsewhere in the Shire.
    It is probable that the craft of building, as many other crafts beside, was derived from the Dúnedain. But the Hobbits may
     have learned it direct from the Elves, the teachers of Men intheir youth. For the Elves of the High Kindred had not yet forsaken Middle-earth, and they dwelt still at that time at the
     Grey Havens away to the west, and in other places within reach of the Shire. Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still
     to be seen on the Tower Hills beyond the western marches. They shone far off in the moonlight. The tallest was furthest away,
     standing alone upon a green mound. The Hobbits of the Westfarthing said that one could see the Sea from the top of that tower;
     but no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it. Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had
     ever returned to report it. Most Hobbits regarded even rivers and small boats with deep misgivings, and not many of them could
     swim. And as the