VII
HOW SAM AMOS RODE IN THE
TOURNAMENT
here's one thing I'd like mighty well to see again before I die," said Aunt Jane, "and that is a good, old-fashioned fair. The apostle says we must 'press forward, forgetting the things that are behind,' but there's some things I've left behind that I can't never forget, and the fairs we had in my day is one of 'em."
It was the quietest hour of an August afternoon—that time when one seems to have reached "the land where it is always afternoon"—and Aunt Jane and I were sitting on the back porch, shelling butter-beans for the next day's market. Before us lay the garden in the splendid fulness of late summer. Concord and Catawba grapes loaded the vines on the rickety old arbor; tomatoes were ripening in reckless plenty, to be given to the neighbors, or to lie in tempting rows on the window-sill of the kitchen and the shelves of the back porch; the second planting of cucumber vines ran in flowery luxuriance over the space allotted to them, and even encroached on the territory of the squashes and melons. Damsons hung purpling over the eaves of the house, and wasps and bees kept up a lively buzzing as they feasted on the windfalls of the old yellow peach tree near the garden gate. Nature had distributed her sunshine and showers with wise generosity that year, and neither in field nor in garden was there lack of any good thing. Perhaps it was this gracious abundance, presaging fine exhibits at the coming fair, that turned Aunt Jane's thoughts towards the fairs of her youth.
"Folks nowadays don't seem to think much about fairs," she continued; "but when I was young a fair was something that the grown folks looked forward to jest like children look for Christmas. The women and the men, too, was gittin' ready for the fair all the year round, the women piecin' quilts and knittin' socks and weavin' carpets and puttin' up preserves and pickles, and the men raisin' fine stock; and when the fair come, it was worth goin' to, child, and worth rememberin' after you'd gone to it.
"I hear folks talkin' about the fair every year, and I laugh to myself and I say, 'You folks don't know what a fair is.' And I set out there on my porch fair week and watch the buggies and wagons goin' by in the mornin' and comin' home at night, and I git right happy, thinkin' about the time when me and Abram and the children used to go over the same road to the fair, but a mighty different sort of fair from what they have nowadays. One thing is, honey, they have the fairs too soon. It never was intended for folks to go to fairs in hot weather, and here they've got to havin' 'em the first week in September, about the hottest, driest, dustiest time of the whole year. Nothin' looks pretty then, and it always makes me think o' folks when they've been wearin' their summer clothes for three months, and everything's all faded and dusty and drabbled. That's the way it generally is in September. But jest wait till two or three good rains come, and everything's washed clean and sweet, and the trees look like they'd got a new set o' leaves, and the grass comes out green and fresh like it does in the spring, and the nights and the mornin's feel cool, though it's hot enough in the middle o' the day; and maybe there'll come a touch of early frost, jest enough to turn the top leaves on the sugar maples. That's October, child, and that's the time for a fair.
"Lord, the good times I've seen in them days! Startin' early and comin' home late, with the sun settin' in front of you, and by and by the moon comin' up behind you, and the wind blowin' cool out o' the woods on the side o' the road; the baby fast asleep in my arms, and the other children talkin' with each other about what they'd seen, and Abram drivin' slow over the rough places, and lookin' back every once in a while to see if we was all there. It's a curious thing, honey; I liked fairs as well as anybody, and I reckon I saw all there was to be seen, and heard everything there was to be heard every time I went to one. But now, when I git to callin' 'em up, it appears to me that the best part of it all, and the part I ricollect the plainest, was jest the goin' there and the comin' back home.
"Abram knew I liked to stay till everything was over, and he'd git somebody to water and feed the stock, and then I never had any hot suppers to git while the fair lasted; so there wasn't anything to hurry me and Abram. I ricollect Maria Petty come up one day about five o'clock, jest as we was lookin' at the last race, and says she, 'I'm about to drop, Jane; but I believe I'd ruther stay here and sleep on the floor o' the amp'itheater than to go home and cook a hot supper.' And I says, 'Don't cook a hot supper, then.' And says she, 'Why, Silas wouldn't eat a piece o' cold bread at home to save his life or mine either.'