Whether or not the name had an influence on the weather, I don't know.
Perhaps it did rain some years, but, as I remember, County Fair time
seems to have had a sky perfectly cloudless, with its blue only a little
dulled around the edges where it came close to the ground and the dust
settled on it. Things far off were sort of hazy, but that might have
been the result of the bonfires of leaves we had been having evenings
after supper. In Fair weather, when the sun had been up long enough
to get a really good start, it was right warm, but in the shade it
was cool, and nights and mornings there was a chill in the air that
threatened worse things to come.
The harvest is past, the summer is ended. Down cellar the swing-shelf is
cram-jam full of jellyglasses, and jars of fruit. Out on the hen-house
roof are drying what, when the soap-box wagon was first built, promised
barrels and barrels of nuts to be brought up with the pitcher of cider
for our comforting in the long winter evenings, but what turns out, when
the shucks are off, to be a poor, pitiful half-peck, daily depleted by
the urgent necessity of finding out if they are dry enough yet. Folks
are picking apples, and Koontz's cider-mill is in full operation. (Do
you know any place where a fellow can get some nice long straws?) Out in
the fields are champagne-colored pyramids, each with a pale-gold heap
of corn beside it, and the good black earth is dotted with orange blobs
that promise pumpkin-pies for Thanksgiving Day. No. Let me look again.
Those aren't pie-pumpkins; those are cow-pumpkins, and if you want to
see something kind of pitiful, I'll show you Abe Bethard chopping up
one of those yellow globes--with what, do you suppose? With the cavalry
saber his daddy used at Gettysburg.
The harvest is past, the summer is ended. As a result of all the good
feeding and the outdoor air we have had for three or four months past,
the strawberry shortcakes, and cherry-pies, and green peas, and
new potatoes, and string beans, and roasting-ears, and all such
garden-stuff, and the fresh eggs, broken into the skillet before Speckle
gets done cackling, and the cockerels we pick off the roost Saturday
evenings (you see, we're thinning 'em out; no sense in keeping all of
'em over winter)--as a result, I say, of all this good eating, and the
outdoor life, and the necessity of stirring around a little lively these
days we feel pretty good. And yet we get kind of low in our minds, too.
The harvest is past, the summer is ended. It's gone, the good playtime
when we didn't have to go to school, when the only foot-covering we wore
was a rag around one big toe or the other; the days when we could stay
in swimming all day long except mealtimes; the days of Sabbath-school
picnics and excursions to the Soldiers' Home--it's gone. The harvest
is past, the summer is ended. The green and leafy things have heard the
word, and most of them are taking it pretty seriously, judging by their
looks. But the maples and some more of them, particularly the maples,
with daredevil recklessness, have resolved, as it were, to die with
their boots on, and flame out in such violent and unbelievable colors
that we feel obliged to take testimony in certain outrageous cases,
and file away the exhibits in the Family Bible where nobody will bother
them. The harvest is past, the summer is ended. Rainy days you can see
how played-out and forlorn the whole world looks. But at Fair time, when
the sun shines bright, it appears right cheerful.
It seems to me the Fair lasted three days. One of them was a holiday
from school, I know, and unless I'm wrong, it wasn't on the first day,
because then they were getting the things in, and it wasn't on the last
day, because then they were taking the things out, so it must have been
on the middle day, when everybody went. Charley Wells had both the depot
'buses out with “County FAIR” painted on muslin hung on the sides. The
Cornet Band rode all round town in one, and so on over to the “scene of
the festivities” as the Weekly Examiner very aptly put it, and then both
'buses stood out in front of the American House, waiting for passengers,
with Dinny Enright calling out: “This sway t' the Fair Groun's! Going
RIGHT over!” Only he always waited till he got a good load before he
turned a wheel. (Dinny's foreman at the chair factory now. Did you know
that? Doing fine. Gets $15 a week, and hasn't drunk a drop for nearly
two years.)
Everybody goes the middle day of the Fair, everybody that you ever did
know or hear tell of. You'll be going along, kind of half-listening to
the man selling Temperance Bitters, and denouncing the other bitters
because they have “al-cue-hawl” in them, and “al-cue-hawl will make you
drunk,” (which is perfectly true), and kind of half-listening to the man
with the electric machine, declaring: “Ground is the first conductor;
water is the second conductor,” and you'll be thinking how slippery the
grass is to walk on, when a face in the crowd will, as it were, sting
your memory. “I ought to know that man,” says you to yourself. “Now, who
the mischief is he? Barker? No, 't isn't Barker, Barkdull? No. Funny
I can't think of his name. Begins with B I'm pretty certain.” And you
trail along after him, as if you were a detective, sort of keeping out
of his sight, and yet every once in a while getting a good look at him.
“Mmmmmm!” says you. “What is that fellow's name? Why, sure. McConica.”
And you walk up to him and stick out your hand while he's gassing with
somebody, and there's that smile on your face that says: “I know you
but you don't know me,” and he takes it in a limp sort of fashion, and
starts to say: “You have the advantage of--” when, all of a sudden, he
grabs your hand as if he were going to jerk your arm out of its socket
and beat you over the head with the bloody end, and shouts out: “Why,
HELLO, Billy! Well, suffering Cyrus and all hands round! Hold still a
second and let me look at you. Gosh darn your hide, where you been for
so long? I though you'd clean evaporated off the face the earth. Why,
how AIR you? How's everything? That's good. Let me make you acquainted
with my wife. Molly, this is Mr.--” But she says: “Now don't you tell me
what his name is. Let me think. Why, Willie Smith! Well, of all things!
Why, how you've changed! Honest, I wouldn't have knowed you. Do you mind
the time we went sleigh-ridin' the whole posse of us, and got upset down
there by Hanks's place?” And then you start in on “D' you mind?” and
“Don't you recollect?” and you talk about the old school-days, and who's
married, and who's moved out to Kansas, and who's got the Elias Hoover
place now, and how Ella Trimble--You know Ella Diefenbaugh, old Jake
Diefenbaugh's daughter, the one that lisped. Course you do. Well, she
married Ed Trimble, and he died along in the early part of the summer.
Typhoid. Was getting well but he took a relapse, and went off like that!
And now she's left with three little ones, and they guess poor Ella has
a pretty hard time making out. And this old schoolmate that you start
to tell a funny story about is dead, and the freckle-faced boy with the
buck teeth that put the rabbit in the teacher's desk, he's dead, too,
and the boy that used to cry in school when they read:
“Give me three grains of corn, mother,
Only three grains o f corn;
To save what little life I have, mother,
Till the coming o f the morn.”
well, he studied law with old judge Rodehaver, and got to be Prosecuting
Attorney, but he took to drinking--politics, you know--and now he's just
gone to the dogs. Smart as a steel-trap, and bright as a dollar. Oh, a
terrible pity! A terrible pity. And as you hear the fate of one after
another of the happy companions of your childhood, and the sadness of
life comes over you, they start to tell something that makes you laugh
again. I tell you. Did you ever see one of these concave glasses, such
as the artists use when they want to get an idea of how a picture looks
all together as a whole, and not as an assemblage of parts? Well, what
the concave glass is to a picture, so such talk is to life. It sort of
draws it all together, and you see it as a whole, its sunshine and its
shadow, its laughter and its tears, its work and its play, its past and
its present. But not its future. The Good Man has mercifully hidden that
from us.
It does a body good to get such a talk once in a while.
And there are the young fellows and the girls. This young gentleman in
the rimless eye-glasses, who is now beginning to “go out among 'em” the
last time you saw him was in meeting when Elder Drown was preaching, and
my gentleman stood up in the seat and shouted shrilly: “'T ain't at all,
man. 'T ain't at all!” And this sweet girl-graduate--the last time you
saw her was just after Becky Daly, in the vain effort to “peacify” the
squalling young one, had given her a fresh egg to play with. I kind
o' like the looks of the younger generation of girls. But I don't know
about the young fellows. They look to me like a trifling lot. Nothing
like what they were in our young days. I don't see but what us old
codgers had better hold on a while longer to the County Clerk's office,
and the Sheriff's office, and the Probate judgeship, and the presidency
of the National Bank. It wouldn't be safe to trust the destinies of
the country in the hands of such heedless young whiffets. Engaged to be
married! Oh, get out! What? Those babies?
I kept awake most of the time the man was lecturing on: “The Republic:
Will it Endure?” but I don't remember that he said anything in it about
the crops. (We can't go 'round meeting the folks all day. We really must
give a glance at the exhibition.) And I am one of those who hold to the
belief that while the farmers can raise ears of corn as long as from
your elbow to your fingertips, as big 'round as a rollingpin, and set
with grains as regular and even as an eight-dollar set of artificial
teeth; as long as they grow potatoes the size of your foot, and such
pretty oats and wheat, and turnips, and squashes, and onions, and apples
and all kinds of truck, and raise them not only in increasing size but
increasing quantities to the acre I feel as if the Republic would last
the year out anyway. Not that I have any notion that mere material
prosperity will make and keep us a free people, but it goes to show that
the farmers are not plodding along, doing as their fathers did before
them, but that they are reading and studying, and taking advantage of
modern methods. There are two ways of increasing your income. One is by
enlarging your output, and the other is by enlarging your share of the
proceeds from the sale of that output. The Grand Dukes will not always
run this country. The farmers saved the Union once by dying for it;
they will save it again by living for it.
The scientific fellows tell us that we have not nearly reached the
maximum of yield to the acre of crops that are harvested once a year,
but in regard to the crops that are harvested twice a day it looks to me
as if we were doing fairly well. Nowadays we hardly know what is meant
by the expression, “Spring poor.” It is a sinister phrase, and tells
a story of the old, cruel days when farmers begrudged their cattle the
little bite they ate in wintertime, so that when the grass came again
the poor creatures would fall over trying to crop it. They were so
starved and weak that, as the saying went, they had to lean up against
the fence to breathe. They don't do that way now, as one look at the
fine, sleek cows will show you. A cow these days is a different sort of
a being, her coat like satin, and her udder generous, compared with the
wild-eyed things with burrs in their tails, and their flanks crusted
with filth, their udders the size of a kid glove, and yielding such a
little dab of milk and for such a short period. Hear the dairymen boast
now of the miraculous yearly yield in pounds of butter and milk, and
when they say: “You've got to treat a cow as if she were a lady,” it
sounds like good sense.
Pigs are naturally so untidy about their persons, and have such shocking
table-manners that it seems difficult to treat a sow like a lady, but
that one in the pen yonder, with her litter of sucking pigs, seems
very interesting. Come, let's have a look. Aren't the little pigs dear
things? I'd like to climb in and take one of them up to pet it; do you
s'pose she'd mind it if I did? I can see decided improvement in the
modern hogs over old Mose Batcheller's. If you remember, his were what
were known as “razorbacks.” They could go like the wind, and the fence
was not made that could stop them. If they couldn't root under it, they
could turn themselves sidewise and slide through between the rails.
It was told me that, failing all else, they could give their tails a
swing--you remember the big balls of mud they used to have on their
tails' ends--they could swing their tails after the manner of an athlete
throwing the hammer, and fly over the top of the tallest stake-and-rider
fence ever put up. I don't know whether this is the strict truth or not,
but it is what was told me as a little boy, and I don't think people
would wilfully deceive an innocent child.
The pigs nowaday aren't as smart as that, but they cut up better at
hog-killing time. They aren't quite so trim; indeed, they are nothing
but cylinders of meat, whittled to a point at the front end, and set on
four pegs, but as you lean on the top-rail of the pens out at the County
Fair and look down upon them, you can picture in your mind, without
much effort, ham, and sidemeat, and bacon, and spare-ribs, and smoked
shoulder, and head-cheese, and liver-wurst, and sausages, and glistening
white lard for crullers and pie-crust--Yes, I think pigs are right
interesting. I know they've got Scripture for it, the folks that think
it is wrong to eat pork, but somehow I feel sorry for them; they miss
such a lot, not only in the eating line, but other ways. They are always
being persecuted, and harassed, and picked at. Whereas the pork-fed man,
it seems to me, sort of hankers to be picked at. It gives him a good
chance to slap somebody slonchways. He feels better after he has seen
his persecutors go away with a cut lip, and fingering of their teeth to
see if they're all there.
You'll just have to take me gently but firmly by the sleeve and lead me
past the next exhibit, the noisy one, where there's so much cackling
and crowing. I give you fair warning that if you get me started talking
about chickens, the County Fair will have to wait till some other time.
I don't know much about ducks, and geese, and guinea-hens, and pea-fowl,
and turkeys, but chickens--Why, say. We had a hen once (Plymouth Rock
she was; we called her Henrietta), and honestly, that hen knew more than
some folks. One time she--all right. I'll hush. Let's go in here.
I don't remember whether the pies, and cakes, and canned fruit, and such
are in Pomona Hall or the Fine Arts Hall. Fine Arts Hall I think. They
ought to be. I speak to be one of the judges that give out the premiums
in this department. I'd be generous and let somebody else do the judging
of the cakes, because I don't care much for cake. Oh, I can manage
to choke it down, but I haven't the expert knowledge, practical and
scientific, that I have in the matter of pie. I'd bear my share of the
work when it came to the other things, jellies and preserves, and pies,
but not cake. Wouldn't know just exactly how to go at it in the matter
of jellies. I'd take a glass of currant, and hold it up to the light to
note its crimson glory. And I'd lift off the waxed paper top and peer
in, and maybe give the jelly a shake. And then I'd take a spoon and
taste, closing my eyes so as to appear to deliberate--they'd roll up
in an ecstacy anyhow--and I'd smack my lips, and say: “Mmmmm!” very
thoughtfully, and set the glass back, and write down in my book my
judgment, which would invariably be: “First Prize.” Because if there is
anything on top of this green earth that I think is just about right, it
is currant jelly. Grape jelly is nice, and crab-apple jelly has its good
points, and quince jelly is very delicate, but there is something about
currant jelly that seems to touch the spot. Quince preserves are good
if there is enough apple with the quince, and watermelon preserves are a
great favorite, not because they are so much better tasting, but because
the lucent golden cubes in the spicy syrup appeal so to the eye. But
if you want to know what I think is really good eating in the preserve
line, you just watch my motions when I come to the tomato preserves,
these little fig-tomatoes, and see how quick the red card is put on
them. Yes, indeed. It's been a long time, hasn't it? since you had any
tomato-preserves, you that haven't been “Back Home” lately.
It's no great trick to put up other fruit so that it will keep, but I'd
look the canned tomatoes over pretty carefully, and if I saw that one
lady had not only put them up so that they hadn't turned foamy, but had
also succeeded with green corn, and that other poser, string beans,
I'd give her first premium, because I'd know she was a first-rate
housekeeper, and a careful woman, and one that deserved encouragement.
But I'd save myself for the pies. I can tell a rich, short, flaky crust,
and I can tell the kind that is as brown as a dried apple, and tough as
the same on the top, and sad and livery on the bottom. And I know about
fillings, how thick they ought to be, and how they ought to be seasoned,
and all. Particularly pumpkin-pies, because I had early advantages that
way that very few other boys had. I was allowed to scrape the crock that
had held the pumpkin for the pies. So that's how I know as much as I do.
I suppose, however, when all is said and done, that there is no pie that
can quite come up to an apple-pie. You take nice, short crust that's
been worked up with ice-water, and line the tin with it, and fill it
heaping with sliced, tart apples--not sauce. Mercy, no!--and sweeten
them just right, and put on a lump of butter, and some allspice, and
perhaps a clove, and a little lemon peel, and then put on the cover,
and trim off the edge, and pinch it up in scallops, and draw a couple of
leaves in the top with a sharp knife, and have the oven just right, and
set it in there, and I tell you that when ma opens the oven-door to see
how the pie is coming on, there distils through the house such a perfume
that you cry out in a choking voice: “Say! Ain't dinner 'most ready?”
But I fully recognize the fact that very often our judgment is warped by
feeling, and I am inclined to believe that even the undoubted merit of
the apple-pie would not prevail against a vinegar-pie, if such should be
presented to me for my decision. A vinegar-pie? Well, it has a top and
bottom crust, the same as any other pie, but its filling is made
of vinegar, diluted with water to the proper degree of sub-acidity,
sweetened with molasses, thickened with flour, and all baked as any
other pie. You smile at its crude simplicity, and wonder why I should
favor it. To you it doesn't tell the story that it does to me. It
doesn't take you back in imagination to “the airly days,” when folks
came over the mountains in covered wagons, and settled in the Western
Reserve, leaving behind them all the civilization of their day, and its
comforts, parting from relatives and friends, knowing full well that
in this life they never more should look upon their faces--leaving
everything behind to make a new home in the western wilds.
Is was a land of promise that they came to. The virgin soil bore
riotously. There were fruit-trees in the forest that Johnny Appleseed
had planted on his journeyings. The young husband could stand in his
dooryard and kill wild turkeys with his rifle. They fed to loathing
on venison, and squirrels, and all manner of game, and once in a great
while they had the luxury of salt pork. They were well-nourished,
but sometimes they pined for that which was more than mere food. They
hungered for that which should be to the meals' victuals what the flower
is to the plant.
“I whoosh't--I woosh't was so we could hev pie,” sighed one such. (Let
us call him Uriah Kinney). I think that sounds as if it were his name.
“Land's sakes!” snapped his wife, exasperated that he should be thinking
of the same thing that she was. “Land's sakes! Haow d' ye s'pose I kin
make a pie when I hain't got e'er a thing to make it aout o'? You gimme
suthirnn to make it aout o', an' you see haow quick--”
“I ain't a-faultinn ye, Mary Ann,” interposed Uriah gently. “I know haow
't is. I was on'y tellin' ye. I git I git a kind o' hum'sick sometimes.
'Pears like as if I sh'd feel more resigned like.... Don't ye cry, Mary
Ann. I know, I know. You feel julluk I do 'baout back home, an' all luk
that.”
O woman! When the heft of thy intellect is thrown against a problem,
something has got to give. Not long after, Uriah sits down to dinner,
and can hardly ask a blessing, he has to swallow so. A pie is on the
table!
“Gosh, Mary Ann, but this is good!” says he, holding out his hand
for the third piece. “This is lickinn good!” And he celebrates her
achievement far and wide.
“My Mary Ann med me a pie t' other day, was the all-firedest best pie I
ever et.”
“Med you what?”
“Med me a pie.”
“Pie? Whutch talkinn' baout? Can't git nummore pies naow. Frot 's all
gin aout.”
“I golly, she med it just the same. Smartest woman y' ever see.” The man
dribbled at the mouth.
“What sh' make it aout o'?”
“Vinegar an' worter, I think she said. I d' know 's I ever et anythinn
I relished julluk that. My Mary Ann, tell yew! She's 'baout's smart 's
they make 'em.”
I wish I knew who she really was whom I have called Mary Ann Kinney, she
that made the first vinegar-pie. I wish I knew where her grave is that
I might lay upon it a bunch of flowers, such as she knew and
liked--sweet-william, and phlox, and larkspur, and wild columbine. It
couldn't make it up to her for all the hardships she underwent when she
was bringing up a family in that wild, western country, and especially
that fall when they all had the “fever 'n' ager” so bad, Uriah and the
twins chilling one day, and Hiram and Sophronia Jane the next, and she
just as miserable as any of them, but keeping up somehow, God only knows
how. It couldn't make it up to her, but as I laid the pretty posies
against the leaning headstone on which is written:
“A Loving Wife, a Mother Dear,
Faithful Friend Lies Buried Here.”
I believe she 'd get word of it somehow, and understand what I was
trying to say by it.
I'll ask to be let off the committee that judges the rest of the
exhibits in the Fine Arts Hall, the quilts and the Battenberg, and the
crocheting, and such. I know the Log Cabin pattern, and the
Mexican Feather pattern, and I think I could make out to tell the
Hen-and-Chickens pattern of quilts, but that's as much as ever. And as
to the real, hand-painted views of fruit-cake, and grapes and apples on
a red table-cloth, I am one of those that can't make allowances for the
fact that she only took two terms. I call to mind one picture that Miss
Alvalou Ashbaker made of her pap, old “Coonrod” Ashbaker. The Lord knows
he was a “humbly critter,” but he wasn't as “humbly” as she made him out
to be, with his eyes bulging out of his head as if he was choking on a
fishbone. And, instead of her dressing him up in his Sunday clothes, I
wish I may never see the back of my neck if that girl didn't paint him
in a red-and-black barred flannel shirt, with porcelain buttons on it!
And his hair looked as if the calf had been at it. Wouldn't you think
somebody would have told her? And that isn't all. She got the premium!
Neither am I prepared to pass judgment on the fancy penmanship displayed
by Professor Swope, framed elegantly in black walnut, and gilt,
depicting a bounding deer, all made out of hair-line, shaded spirals,
done with his facile pen. (No wonder a deer can jump so, with all those
springs inside him.) Professor Swope writes visiting cards for you,
wonderful birds done in flourishes and holding ribbons in their bills.
He puts your name on the ribbon place. Neatest and tastiest thing you
can imagine. I like to watch him do it, but it makes me feel unhappy,
somehow. I never was much of a scribe, and it's too late for me to learn
now.
I don't feel so downcast when I examine the specimens of writing done by
the children of District No. 34. I can just see the young ones working
at home on these things, with their tongues stuck out of one corner of
their mouths.
“Rome was not built in a day
Rome was not built in a day
Rome was not built in a day”
and so on, bearing down hard on the downstroke of the curve in the
capital “R,” and clubbing the end of the little “t.” And in the higher
grades, they toil over “An Original Social Letter,” describing to
an imaginary correspondent a visit to Crystal Lake, or the Magnetic
Springs. I can hear them mourn: “What shall I say next?” and “Ma, make
Effie play some place else, won't you? She jist joggles the table like
everything. Now, see what you done! Now I got to write it all over
again. No, I cain't 'scratch it out. How'd it look to the County Fair
all scratched out? Plague take it all!”
The same hands have done maps of North and South America, and
red-and-blue ink pictures of the circulation of the blood. It does beat
all how smart the young ones are nowadays. I could no more draw off a
picture of the circulation of the blood--get it right, I mean--why, I
wouldn't attempt it.
I am kind of mixed up in my recollection of the hall right next to the
Fine Arts. You know it had two doors in each end. Sometimes I can
see the central space between the doors, roped off and devoted to
sewing-machines with persons demonstrating that they ran as light as a
feather, and how it was no trouble at all to tuck and gather, and
fell; to organs, which struck me with amaze, because by some witchcraft
(octave coupler, I think they called it) the man could play on keys
that he didn't touch, and pianos, whereon young ladies were prevailed to
perform “Silvery Waves”--that's a lovely piece, I think, don't you?--and
“Listen to the mocking-bird, TEE-die-eedle-DONG
Lisen to the mocking-bird, teedle-eedle-EE-dle DONG
The mocking-bird still singing oer her grave,
toomatooral-oo-cal-LEE!”
And then again I can see that central, roped-off space given over
to reckless deviltry, sheer impudent, brazen-faced, bold,
discipline-defying er--er--wickedness. I had heard that people did
things like that, but this was the first time I had ever caught a
glimpse of such carryings-on in the broad open daylight, right before
everybody. I stood there and watched them for hours, expecting every
minute to see fire fall from heaven on them and burn up every son and
daughter of Belial. But it didn't.
I seem to recollect that it was a hot day, and that, tucked away where
not a breath of air could get to them, were three fellows in their
shirtsleeves, one playing on an organ, one on a yellow clarinet, and
one on a fiddle. Every chance he could get, the fiddler would say to the
organist: “Gimme A, please,” and saw away trying to get into some sort
of tune, but the catgut was never twisted that would hold to pitch
with the perspiration dribbling down his fingers in little rills. The
clarinet man looked as if he wanted to cry, and he had to twitter his
eyelids all the time to keep the sweat from blinding him, and every once
in a while, his soggy reed would let go of a squawk that sounded like
a scared chicken. But the organ groaned on unrelentingly, and the tune
didn't matter so much as the rhythm which was kept up as regular as a
clock, whack! whack! whack! whack! And there were two or three other
fellows with badges on that went around shouting: “Select your podners
for the next quadrille! One more couple wanted right over here!”
Dancing. M-hm.
The fiddler “called off” and chanted to the tune, with his mouth on one
side: “Sullootch podners! First couple forward and back. Side couples
the same. Doe see do-o-o-o. Al-lee-man LEFT! Ballunce ALL! Sa-weeny the
corners!” I don't know whether I get the proper order of these commands
or not, or whether my memory serves me as to their effect, but it seems
to me that at “Bal-lunce ALL!” the ladies demurely teetered, first on
one foot and then on the other, like a frozen-toed rooster, while the
gents fairly tore themselves apart with grape-vine twists and fancy
steps, and slapped the dust out of the cracks in the floor. When it came
to “SaWEENG your podners!” the room billowed with flying skirts, and the
ladies squealed like anything. It made you a little dizzy to watch them
do “Graaan' right and left,” and you could understand how those folks
felt--there were always one or two in each set--who had to be hauled
this way and that, not sure whether they were having a good time or
not, but hoping they were, their faces set in a sickly grin, while their
foreheads wrinkled into a puzzled: “How's that? I didn't quite catch
that last remark” expression. I don't know if it affected you in the
same way that it did me, but after I had stood there for a time and
watched those young men and women thus wasting the precious moments that
dropped like priceless pearls into the ocean of Eternity, and were
lost irrevocably, young, men and women giving themselves up to present
enjoyment without one serious thought in their minds as to who was going
to wash the supper dishes, or what would happen if the house took fire
while they were away I say I do not know how the sight of such reckless
frivolity affected you, but I know that after so long a time my face
would get all cramped up from wearing a grin, and I'd have to go out and
look at the reapers and binders to rest myself so I could come back and
look some. There are two things that you simply have to do at the County
Fair, or you aren't right sure you've been. One is to drink a glass of
sweet cider just from the press, (which, I may say in passing, is an
over-rated luxury. Cider has to be just the least bit “frisky” to be
good. I don't mean hard, but “frisky.” You know). And the other is to
buy a whip, if it is only the little toy, fifteen-cent kind. On the
next soap-box to the old fellow that comes every year to sell pictorial
Bibles and red, plush-covered albums, the old fellow in the green
slippers that talks as if he were just ready to drop off to sleep--on
the next soap-box to him is the man that sells the whips. You can buy
one for a dollar, two for a dollar, or four for a dollar, but not one
for fifty cents, or one for a quarter. Don't ask me why, for I don't
know. I am just stating the facts. It can't be done, for I've seen it
tried, and if you keep up the attempt too long, the whip-man will lose
all patience with your unreasonableness, and tell you to go 'long about
your business if you've got any, and not bother the life and soul out of
him, because he won't sell anything but a dollar's worth of whips, and
that's all there is about it.
He sells other things, handsaws, and pencils, and mouth-harps, and two
knives for a quarter, of such pure steel that he whittles shavings off
a wire nail with 'em, and is particular to hand you the very identical
knife he did it with. He has jewelry, though I don't suppose you could
cut a wire nail with it. You might, at that.
To him approaches a boy.
“Got 'ny collar-buttons?”
“Well, now, I'll just look and see. Here's a beautiful rolled-plate gold
watch-chain, with an elegant jewel charm. Lovely blue jewel.” He dangles
the chain and its rich glass pendant, and it certainly does look fine.
“That'd cost you $2.50 at the store. How'd that strike you?”
“Hpm. I want a collar-button.”
“Well, now, you hold on a minute. Lemme look again. Ah, here's a package
'at orta have some in it. Yes, sir, here's four of 'em, enough to last
you a lifetime; front, back, and both sleeves, the kind that flips and
don't tear the buttonholes. Well, by ginger! Now, how'd that git in
here, I want to know? That gold ring? Well, I don't care. It'll have to
go with the collar-buttons. Tell you what I'll do with you: I'll let you
have this elegant solid gold rolled-plate watch-chain and jewel, this
elegant, solid gold ring to git married with--Hay? How about it?--and
these four collar-buttons for--for--twenty-five cents, or a quarter of a
dollar.”
That boy never took that quarter out of his breeches pocket. It just
jumped out of itself. But I see that you are getting the fidgets. You're
hoping that I'll come to the horse-racing pretty soon. You want to
have it all brought back to you, the big, big race-track which, as you
remember it now, must have been about the next size smaller than the
earth's orbit around the sun. You want me to tell about the old farmer
with the bunch of timothy whiskers under his chin that gets his old
jingling wagon on the track just before a heat is to be trotted, and
all the people yell at him: “Take him out!” You want me to tell how
the trotters looked walking around in their dusters, with the eye-holes
bound with red braid, and how the drivers of the sulkies sat with the
tails of their horses tucked under one leg. Well, I'm not going to
do anything of the kind, and if you don't like it, you can go to the
box-office and demand your money back. I hope you'll get it. First
place, I don't know anything about racing, and consequently I don't
believe it's a good thing for the country. All I know is, that some
horses can go faster than others, but which are the fastest ones I can't
tell by the looks, though I have tried several times.... I did not walk
back. I bought a round-trip ticket. They will tell you that these events
at the County Fair tend to improve the breed of horses. So they do--of
fast horses. But the fast horses are no good. They can't any of them go
as fast as a nickel trolley-car when it gets out where there aren't any
houses. And they not only are no good; they're a positive harm. You know
and I know that just as soon as a man gets cracked after fast horses,
it's good-by John with him.
In the next place, I wouldn't mind it if it was only interesting to me.
But it isn't. It bores me to death. You sit there and sit there trying
to keep awake while the drivers jockey and jockey, scheming to get the
advantage of the other fellow, and the bell rings so many times for them
to come back after you think: “They're off this time, sure,” that you
get sick of hearing it. And when they do get away, why, who can tell
which horse is in the lead? On the far side of the track they don't
appear to do anything but poke along, and once in a while some fool
horse will “break” and that's annoying. And then when they come into
the stretch, the other folks that see you with the field-glasses, keep
nudging you and asking: “Who 's ahead, mister? Hay? Who's ahead?” And
it's ruinous to the voice to yell: “Go it! Go it! Go IT, ye devil,
you!” with your throat all clenched that way and your face as red as a
turkey-gobbler's. And that second when they are going under the wire,
and the horse you rather like is about a nose behind the other one
that you despise--Oh, tedious, very tedious. Ho hum, Harry! If I wasn't
engaged, I wouldn't marry. Did you think to put a saucer of milk out for
the kitty before you locked up the house?
No. Horse-racing bores me to death, and as I am one of the charter
members of the Anti-Other-Folks-Enjoyment Society, organized to stop
people from amusing themselves in ways that we don't care for, you
can readily see that it is a matter of principle with me to ignore
horseracing, and not to give it so much encouragement as would come from
mentioning it.
If you're so interested in improving the breed of horses by competitive
contests, what 's the matter with that one where the prize is $5 for the
team that can haul the heaviest load on a stoneboat, straight pulling?
Pile on enough stones to build a house, pretty near, and the owner
of the team, a young fellow with a face like Keats, goes “Ck! Ck! Ck!
Geet... ep... thah BILL! Geet ep, Doll-ay!” and cracks his whip, and
kisses with his mouth, and the horses dance and tug, and jump around and
strain till the stone-boat slides on the grass, and then men climb on
until the load gets so heavy that the team can't budge it. Then another
team tries, and so on, the competitors jawing and jowering at each other
with: “Ah, that ain't fair! That ain't fair! They started it sideways.”
“That don't make no difference.”
“Yes, it does, too, make a difference. Straight ahead four inches.
that's the rule.”
“Well, didn't they go straight ahead four inches? What's a matter with
ye?”
“I'll darn soon show ye what's the matter with me, you come any o' your
shenanigan around here.”
“Mighty ready to accuse other folks o' shenannigan, ain't ye? For half
a cent I'd paste you in the moot.”
“Now, boys! Now boys! None o' that.”
Lots more excitement than a horse-race. Lots more improving to the mind,
and beneficial to the country.
And if you hanker after the human element of skill, what's the matter
with the contest where the women see who can hitch up a horse the
quickest? Didn't you have your favorite picked out from the start? I
did. She was about thirteen years old, dressed in an organdie, and I
think she had light blue ribbons flying from her hat, light blue or
pink, I forget which. Her pa helped her unharness, and you could tell by
the way he look-at her that he thought she was about the smartest
young one for her age in her neighborhood. (You ought to hear her play
“General Grant's Grand March” on the organ he bought for her, a fine
organ with twenty-four stops and two full sets of reeds, and a mirror in
the top, and places to set bouquets and all.) There was a woman in the
contest that seemed, by her actions, to think that the others were just
wasting their time competing with her, but when they got the word “Go!”
(Old Nate Wells was the judge; he sold out the livery-stable business
to Charley, you recollect) her horse backed in wrong, and she got the
harness all twisty-ways, and everything went bewitched. And wasn't she
provoked, though? Served her right, I say. A little woman beside her was
the first to jump into her buggy, and drive off with a strong inhalation
of breath, and that nipping together of the lips that says: “A-a-ah! I
tell ye!” The little girl that we picked out was hopping around like a
scared cockroach, and her pa seemed to be saying: “Now, keep cool! Keep
cool! Don't get flustered,” but when another woman drove off, I know she
almost cried, she felt so bad. But she was third, and when she and her
pa drove around the ring, the people clapped her lots more than the
other two. I guess they must have picked her for a favorite the same as
you and I did. Bless her heart! I hope she got a good man when she grew
up.
Around back of the Old Settlers' Cabin, where they have the relics, the
spinning-wheel, the flax-hackle, and the bunch of dusty tow that nobody
knows how to spin in these degenerate days; the old flint-lock rifle,
and the powder-horn; the tinder-box, and the blue plate, “more'n a
hundred years old;” the dog-irons, tongs, poker, and turkey-wing of an
ancient fireplace--around back of the Old Settlers' Cabin all the early
part of the day a bunch of dirty canvas has been dangling from a rope
stretched between two trees. It was fenced off from the curious, but
after dinner a stranger in fringy trousers and a black singlet went
around picking out big, strong, adventurous young fellows to stand about
the wooden ring fastened to the bottom of the bunch of canvas, which
went over the smoke-pipe of a sort of underground furnace in which a
roaring fire had been built. As the hot air filled the great bag, it was
the task of these helpers to shake out the wrinkles and to hold it down.
Older and wiser ones forbade their young ones to go near it. Supposing
it should explode; what then? But we have always wanted to fly away
up into the air, and what did we come to the Fair for, if not for
excitement? The balloon swells out amazingly fast, and when the
guy-ropes are loosened and drop to the ground, the elephantine bag
clumsily lunges this way and that, causing shrill squeals from those who
fear to be whelmed in it. The man in the singlet tosses kerosene into
the furnace from a tin cup, and you can see the tall flames leap upward
from the flue into the balloon. It grows tight as a drum.
“Watch your horses!” he calls out. There is a pause.... “Let go all!”
The mighty shape shoots up twenty feet or so, and the man in the singlet
darts to the corner to cut a lone detaining rope. As he runs he sheds
his fringy trousers.
“Good-by, everybody!” he cries out, and the sinister possibilities in
that phrase are overlooked in the wonder at seeing him lurch upward
through the air, all glorious in black tights and yellow breech-clout.
Up and up he soars above the tree-tops, and the wind gently wafts him
along, a pendant to a dusky globe hanging in the sky. He is just a speck
now swaying to and fro. The globe plunges upward; the pendant drops like
a shot. There is a rustling sound. It is the intake of the breath of
horror from ten thousand pairs of lungs. Look! Look! The edges of the
parachute ruffle, and then it blossoms out like an opening flower. It
bounces on the air a little, and rocking gently sinks like thistle-down
behind the woods.
It is all over. The Fair is over. Let's go home. Isn't it wonderful
though, what men can do? You'll see; they'll be flying like birds, one
of these days. That's what we little boys think, but we overhear old
Nate Wells say to Tom Slaymaker, as we pass them: “Well, I d' know. I
d' know 's these here b'loon ascensions is worth the money they cost
the 'Sociation. I seen so many of 'em, they don't interest me nummore.
'Less, o' course, sumpun should happen to the feller.”