of miles wide, is walled in by blue mountain ridges of from twelve to
two thousand feet in height, their bases sweeping nearer or farther
and their sky-lines higher or lower in a series of almost symmetrical
curves. The same restrained variety characterizes the surface of the
valley, which billows and rolls throughout like a solidified section of
mid-ocean. The mountains, foothills, and small patches of the valley
are still covered with oak and chestnut, pine and cedar timber, which
make springtime delightful and the autumn splendid. Elsewhere all is
fertile farm land, squarely fenced or marked with low walls of ever
available limestone, which also provides firm, smooth roads stretching
in every direction over hill and meadow. Many farm-houses and barns
are built of this stone, softened with the mellowness of years. Later
structures of local brick with slate roofs seem scarcely less sturdy.
“This same pleasant variety of surface and solidity of building
characterizes the town itself. Cheerful two-and-one-half story houses,
of red brick, with green shutters still prevail, although about the
central square and along the business blocks the height is usually
greater. I well remember the builder of the first three-story house in
town. The first four-story structure was reared in my boyhood. Its
completion was celebrated with fire-works and the first electric lights
seen in the town. Now there are even cut-stone bank fronts, and they
are building an apartment house and a five-story department store.
Near the edges of the town, where the dwellings stand back from the
streets with lawns and flowers and trees, the march of improvement is
particularly noticeable--as indeed it well might be, for the place has
doubled in size since I left.
“These dwellings indicated to me that local prosperity had caused the
tide of physical well-being to rise to the second or shelter stage.
Formerly, ideas of luxury centred chiefly in food, which was consumed
in a variety and abundance that would have made a dietitian shudder.
The land is still one of plenty and good cheer, and a progress through
the town would delight the monarch who said, ‘Let me have men about me
that are fat,’ but other creature comforts have come to be considered
also. The stage of personal adornment has yet to be reached: the men
seldom have their hair trimmed or their trousers pressed, and the
costume of the women is simple. The local attention to such matters
seemed interestingly different from the metropolitan order of clothing,
shelter, food.
“But as it was not progress that I had chiefly come to see, I found
myself returning repeatedly to the old town hall, which once sheltered
the oldest bank and is still surmounted by a tower of strange local
architecture, bearing an equally erratic clock. All this, like
everything else in the place, seemed by no means so large or so
imposing as I had remembered it, and the bank’s disappearance prevented
the repetition of our one local author’s jest concerning ‘the bank
where the wild thyme grows.’ But when I once more climbed the tower
and picked out, one by one, the old landmarks, I felt all of my early
fondness for the place return. No one, I believe, can be without a
certain proprietary affection for a place upon which he has often
looked down from a tower.
“There, above the town, my memory of many of its personages became
vivid. First, always, we admired the old Governor--we never called him
‘ex,’ although he had been that for many years. A fine, burly figure,
even in old age, he was usually seen driving to or from his model farms
in a vehicle which must have antedated the one-hoss shay. And he seldom
passed without some one relating how, when a misguided ram, not being
in position to be awed by his countenance, had made the conventional
attack, he expanded to his fullest height and, with his favorite,
historic, expletive, thundered: ‘Continental dam, sheep! What do you
mean?’
“The Senator, who logically came next, was by no means so impressive;
for, being regarded chiefly as a provider of political places, he was
forced, when he walked abroad, to assume an abstraction profound enough
to make him oblivious of the hungry eyes of his constituents. I fear
that his was not a happy life, at least when he was at home, which grew
to be more and more seldom.
“The General, however, loved to parade his tall, proud figure. It
was currently reported that he wore stays; certainly he carried his
shoulders always ready for epaulettes and his head poised for a
chapeau. For years he longed to be elected a Congressman, but always
in vain. A tradition that he had once compared a poor man to a wet
dog embodied the popular distrust of his aristocratic nature; and
his set speech of compliment to each village where he spoke--that
the fairness of its daughters almost persuaded him to renounce his
bachelorhood--usually waked sarcasm rather than applause.
“After the General came the Colonel, an attorney so genial that,
it was said, he habitually bowed to trees and hitching-posts, from
mere force of habit. Every one suspected him of storing up popularity
against the day when he might run for office. Whether he ever compassed
or even desired such an end, I do not know.
“The Town Beauty, I learned, had long since married an officer in the
army. We had, I think, even more than our share of handsome girls,
but to gaze upon her was such an unalloyed delight that she came to
be prized as one of the chief attractions of the town. It used to be
said, jocosely, that after visitors had seen the new court house, they
were always made to wait until she passed, before any one would show
them the way to the fair grounds. Certainly she never disappointed the
fondest anticipations, except during one sad season when the whole town
mourned. Most inexcusably she had attempted to improve the lily and the
rose of her complexion by means of a cosmetic, which must have been
devised solely to further the sale of the same manufacturer’s healing
lotions. The damage wrought was most distressing, and recovery was slow
and anxious, but happily complete. There was some desire to express the
public anxiety that there should be no more such experiments; but the
lesson had been learned, and thereafter her loveliness only bloomed the
richer.
“The persons mentioned were all conspicuous members of the local
aristocracy, to which the professions of law, and, to a lesser
degree, of medicine, were the open sesame. The chief members of these
professions, together with all such persons as were distinguished for
family, and a selection from those who were distinguished for wealth,
made up a somewhat exclusive social set, which gave an annual ball,
invited friends to dinner, and went on vacations--sometimes even to
Europe. As for the great majority, the men were devoted chiefly to
business and sometimes to politics; the women to their homes and their
churches, which last regulated all of their social as well as their
religious activities.
“For the recreation of our elders there was always a great deal of
driving. It was possible to keep a carriage on an income that would
not suffice for that alone in the metropolis. The carriage roads were
and still are excellent and the country charming, with here and there
a stately old manor house for historic atmosphere. Even then the
mountains were frequently resorted to. Now they are easily accessible,
and boast not only numerous hotels, but many cottages to which the
more fortunate go back and forth daily in summer. To my boyhood the
mountains represented not only untamed nature, but their hotels were
outposts of the great world beyond. The mountains represented history
also, for on the side of one was a battlefield, marked with a huge
cairn of stones; and they meant literature, as well, for in one of the
gaps was the home of an author whose novels and poems were in the town
library.
“With us young people bicycles were popular to a degree that once, in
the days of the old, high wheels, drew even a national meet to the old
town. But the simple attractions of the place palled on our travelled
guests, and the occasion began to look like a failure until, in the
evening, the entertainment committee got together and started a false
alarm of fire, which allowed the visitors to pull the hand-apparatus
of the local fire companies madly about the streets, until their
superabundant energies were exhausted and they went to bed happy.
“These volunteer fire companies were centres of the most intense
interest, making up in anticipation and preparation for the practical
efficiency which, happily, they were seldom called upon to demonstrate.
They held innumerable initiations, elections, anniversaries, and
reorganizations; and they were always considering, with infinite
attention to detail, the adoption of new uniforms and the purchase of
new equipment. All of which we youngsters ardently emulated with an
organization which, in a vocabulary more aspiring than accurate, we
called ‘The Juneviles.’
“Even more, if possible, than by the fire companies, our interest was
stirred by the annual county fair, which, for four days in the autumn,
crowded the town with visitors and filled the central square, of
evenings, with all sorts of travelling mountebanks. This was eagerly
welcomed as practically our only opportunity for familiarity with the
histrionic art, for the attractions of the town theatre were not of a
sort to be generally approved. I remember, however, attending at least
one performance there when young enough to be tremendously puzzled by
the difficulties of a harlequin in attempting to get through a wall the
door of which mysteriously changed from place to place, while from time
to time the wall became all doors or showed no doors at all.
“Sometimes the few bookish people gathered into reading clubs or
welcomed visiting lecturers, who also conducted discussions and
criticised essays, when anybody wrote them. The only lecture that I
recall dealt with Rugby, and impressed me partly for Tom Brown’s sake,
but chiefly because on that occasion the most sensitive man in the town
covered himself with confusion by absent-mindedly clapping his hands
together in pursuit of a mosquito, with the effect of applauding loudly
at a most inappropriate time. The after-lecture discussions struck me
then as very learned, but I judge now that I must have been easily
impressed, since the only specimen that I remember was the statement
that ‘Carlyle was a bear, wallowing in a sea of words,’ made by the
principal of the high school.
“Even now I should consider him as remarkable as his rhetoric. For he
was not only the official head of the dozen schools in his building,
but he also taught, alone and unaided, all of the classes in the high
school, preparing us for college in every subject from algebra to
zoölogy, and doing it well. His only limitation was that he chewed
tobacco, secretly, or as secretly as he was able with the eyes of
thirty boys constantly upon him.
“Not the least interesting feature of my visit was the opportunity it
provided for noting the present status of old schoolmates. Most of
them had developed in directions that might have been anticipated
from their youthful traits. Even the fact that two of the most
harum-scarum had become responsible bank directors was explained by
the remembrance that youthful lawlessness may often represent merely a
superabundance of excellent energy. The school dreamer had become the
chief confectioner of the town, expending his imagination on a new-art
shop and a summer garden lighted by the electric eyes of Cheshire cats
and owls perched in the trees. The serious boy had acquired practice
as a physician until his stout body and large head seemed bursting
with incommunicable knowledge concerning the local human comedy. The
clever boy had become a successful attorney, more than satisfied with
his profession as an excellent working hypothesis in an unintelligible
world. The boy who had become a musician pleased me, perhaps, most of
all. With a talent that would win distinction anywhere, he rejected
the distractions of cities for a simple environment, where he might
discover and develop his spontaneous self.
“If those that I had known as boys were now men, those I had known as
mature were now old. The fine old clergyman who for years had led in
every movement for things of good report now saw much of his seed
bring forth abundantly, and had, moreover, the personal satisfaction of
knowing that his youngest son had won distinction as the first Rhodes
scholar from his state. The one local artist, a landscape painter,
still pursued with modest determination his honest, if undistinguished,
toil. The old florist was still the finest of idealists in his devotion
to nature, irrespective of worldly considerations. I was happy to note
that he seemed to have prospered materially, in spite of his fondness
for giving and his distaste for selling his plants.
“One or two old men that I had known were still able to regale me
with memories of ‘the Rebellion,’ and of the installation of the town
water-works. But most of my familiars of that generation had passed
away. The two old admirals who had so strangely chosen such an inland
berth for their final cruise, the old doctor who urged his horse by
explosively uttering the words ‘effervescent’ and ‘fundamental,’
the little old librarian with his fondness for Josephus, and the
sadly wheezy conductor of ‘the Madrigal Club’--even the decayed old
gentlewoman who wore different colored wigs to suit her gowns--all had
passed on.
“But, in spite of many such absences, and of some sadder memories,
my visit was one of profound and lasting pleasure. I did not mind the
omniscient small-town scrutiny, which somehow apprised my friends of
all that I had been doing, even before I called. And I found the whole
place full of the most delightful little interests, even for one who
has so little of ‘the restless analyst’ about him. From the point of
view of contrasting the residential values of capital and province,
the advantages of the old town are, perhaps, largely of a negative
character. But all the essentials of life are there, although in
little, and success being so much less difficult, and failure so much
less disastrous, the balance of vitality left over is satisfyingly
large. It was not at all a bad place to spend one’s youth, and it would
be by no means a bad setting for one’s old age.”
XXII
_The County Fair_
I found Professor Maturin deeply pondering, the other evening, the
season when the county fair stirs semi-rural communities, all over the
land, with anticipation, realization, and fresh reminiscence. “No one
of our institutions for pleasure or profit,” said he, “is more firmly
established; and yet students of local manners and customs and of
social psychology appear to have given it small attention, and there is
no notable record of it in literature, save that by Mr. Howells in the
beginning of ‘The Coast of Bohemia.’ Its phenomena, however, are easily
ascertainable by any one who has rural acquaintance or access to rural
newspapers.”
I asked him to instruct me concerning the subject, and he continued
substantially as follows:
“For weeks before the great occasion these newspapers record and
reflect the steady growth of the greatest enthusiasm of the year.
Meetings of the Fair Association begin, and become more and more
frequent, until it is announced that the secretary will be at his
office daily. Immediately thereafter rumors spread, or are spread,
concerning larger exhibits than ever before, of live stock, of
machinery, of household entries; in short, of everything.
“Extra offices are ostentatiously opened for every sort of entry,
and are as ostentatiously filled with more and more assistants, who
periodically and publicly exhaust their entire supply of exhibit tags.
After a secretly anxious interval the officers of the association
begin to smile over the conscious possession of actual cash paid for
concessions, and lavishly hire a negro of aldermanic proportions, in
a costume boasting three hundred and fourteen brilliant patches and
two hundred and three assorted buttons, to parade the streets in the
interests of advertising.
“At the last meeting but one before the fair, it is officially
announced that the ‘outlook is for the greatest collection of exhibits
ever entered,’ and the association decides, out of the fullness of its
heart and pockets, to equip the new barn with electric lights, and to
issue complimentary tickets to all clergymen who apply for them.
“At the same meeting it awards the ‘feed privilege,’ and appoints
judges, ticket-takers, grandstand ushers, and many guards, under
the command of a military train-announcer, together with various
unnecessary marshals and sundry mysterious functionaries known as
‘hill-men’ and ‘hatchet-men.’ All of these, especially the night
guards, speedily become heroes in the now almost painfully wide-open
eyes of the town’s small boys.
“The Poultry Fanciers’ Association likewise begins to hold frequent
meetings, planning its own exhibits and its entertainments for visiting
exhibitors, and announcing that silver cups may be given as prizes, in
which event the cups also will be exhibited. Finally, at least one cup
makes its appearance, and is displayed in advance, surrounded by many
ribbon rosettes and streamers destined for such happy birds as are only
less than the best.
“Hotel and restaurant keepers hungrily furbish up old and install new
equipment, increase their attendance and provide music, and make bids
for the reward of virtue by refusing entertainment to such undesirable
citizens as Mormon missionaries. Local real estate booms more loudly
than ever, and local commerce plumes and preens itself with all kinds
of ‘openings’ and ‘fair-week bargains.’ It keeps a jealous eye on
competition, requiring visiting street vendors to keep moving; but it
is so hospitable to visiting custom that when visiting custom’s sleepy
children tumble into its show-cases, it grandly refuses to accept
payment for the resulting damage.
“And now ‘the Midway’ begins to cast its lights and shadows before.
Its prospective patrons sorrow over the enforced absence of the glass
swallower, who has at last succumbed to the rigors of his profession.
But they are felicitous over the return of the electric woman, and
look forward with eager anticipation to the yet untasted delights of
riding on a ‘sea-wave,’ and of throwing rings at the heads of a flock
of live geese. They read with avidity long newspaper accounts, by
correspondents who sign themselves ‘1t,’ of the approaching Russian
midget and the Igorrote village; and the report that two balloonists
are contesting for a concession distracts them between the comparative
merits of a real wedding in mid-air and a cannon that shoots an
aeronaut and a parachute.
“Meanwhile ‘Ten Nights in a Bar-Room’ comes to town with a tent and
a band that parades, but so few persons attend that no performances
are given. Local entertainers, however, climb to the very pinnacle
of competition. The Family Theatre provides ‘An Entire Change of
Programme!’ and the Academy of Music presents ‘A Repertoire Company of
World Wide Reputation!!!’ The skating rink advertises a new floor,
and a grand opening, with decorations of American flags and Japanese
lanterns. And the dancing academy announces a series of fair-week
dances with a new palm-room capable of seating an orchestra of six
pieces.
“Soon the zest of danger is added to the local frame of mind by the
appearance of two men ‘from away,’ who appear dissatisfied with all the
watches that the leading jeweller can display, until it is learned,
after their departure, that they have taken several with them for
more leisurely examination. Thereupon all strangers are looked upon
with suspicion, doors and windows are doubly locked; valuables are
guarded; and local justice warns or incarcerates on suspicion the best
or worst-known local offenders, and congratulates the town on the loss
of fewer horses, watches, and pocket-books than usual. Anxiety over
property, however, at no time approaches that concerning the weather,
which cannot possibly last if it is good, although it will certainly
continue if it is bad.
“Local finance shows its approval of the general course of things by
promising its bank clerks two half-holidays, and local learning smiles
indulgently in paying its teachers earlier than usual, and granting
its pupils a two days’ recess. The Grand Council of the Ancient and
Honorable Order of Fraternity promises its annual visitation during
fair week, and the church endeavors to leaven the worldliness of the
season by announcing the twenty-sixth annual convention of the Woman’s
Home and Foreign Missionary Society.
“When the exhibits actually begin to arrive, one wonders how enthusiasm
can rise higher. The fair grounds present an increasingly busy scene,
until there is scarcely moving room between workmen and wagons.
Incoming teams grow more and more crowded with exhibits and exhibitors,
fakes and fakirs, and, finally, with visitors. Every private house
entertains old friends and new. Public accommodations are taxed to the
utmost, and trading at the city market becomes well-nigh frantic.
“The visitors represent all sorts and conditions of men and women. The
old woman who has never ridden on a railroad train and the old man who
attended the first fair fifty years ago, the veteran who helped defend
the town during the civil war and the business man who is taking his
first vacation in twenty-four years--these divide interest with the
principals in the runaway marriages, of which there are two or three
daily.
“Numerous former residents return for the first time in many years, and
several new families decide to locate permanently. At the last moment
the Governor finds himself unfortunately unable to be present, but the
president of one railroad and the general manager of another come in
private cars, and two rival political candidates are much seen but not
much heard.
“Various other distinguished guests arrive in touring cars, and
countless other less distinguished but equally dust-covered persons
arrive in carriages. Street movement grows very brisk. Buggies clash,
automobiles bump, and trolley cars jump the track; and over all begins
to rise the call of the cabman, ‘Going right out.’ By night all the
shops are brilliant, sidewalks are crowded, and in the square there are
moving picture advertisements, and the flaring torches of vending and
performing fakirs.
“The opening day dawns bright and clear, and every one jubilantly
follows the call of the cabmen, until the town itself seems half
deserted. On the grounds bands boom, marshals gallop, and crowds pour
through and around the buildings. Within one of these, merchants
display pipes and pianos, furniture and furnaces, hardware and
haberdashery, shoes and sewing-machines, carpets and candy, in
apparently endless array.
“On an upper floor the household department demands appreciation for
two thousand four hundred and twenty-four glasses of jelly, six hundred
and fifty-one jars of pickles, three hundred and thirty cakes, and
eighty-nine specimens of homemade soap. Nearby in the department of
fine arts are paper flowers, worsted mottoes, six hundred and fifteen
pieces of embroidery, one hundred and forty-two cushions, four hundred
and forty-three drawings and paintings, and one hundred and ten
curiosities and relics, mostly ‘over one hundred years old.’ Among the
latter the palm is borne by six cocoanut-shell baskets and a tray of
seventeen-year locust shells.
“Elsewhere are many worthy flowers, shrubs, and trees; fruits,
vegetables, and grains--celery a yard tall, pumpkins a yard wide, and
forty-seven varieties of beans. The pavilions and grounds devoted
to machinery present a bewildering array of ploughs, planters,
cultivators, reapers, and stackers; of threshers, separators, huskers,
shellers, cutters, and grinders; of engines and pumps, saws and mills,
and of all things after their kind.