“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.