Until eleven o'clock the entrance gateway to the fair ground was crowded. Farm wagons trundled in, drawn by sleek, well fed plough nags, and stowed full of smiling folk, old and young, male and female, from the out townships; buggies with youths and maidens, the sparkle of breastpins and flutter of ribbons; spring wagons full of students and hard bats from town; carriages brimming with laces, flounces, over skirts, fancy kid gloves, funny little hats and less bonnets, all fermented into languid ebullition by mild-eyed ladies; omnibuses that bore fleshy gentlemen, who wore linen dusters and silk hats and smoked fine cigars; and jammed in among all these were boys on skittish colts, old fellows on flea-bit gray mares, with now and then a reckless stripling on a mule. Occasionally a dog got kicked or run over, giving the assistance of his howls and yelps to the general din, and over all the dust hung heavily in a yellow cloud, shot through with the lightning of burnished trappings and echoing with the hoarse thunder of the trampling, shouting rumbling multitude. Indeed, that hot aguish autumn day let fall its sunshine on the heads and blew its feverish breath through the rifts of the greatest and liveliest mass of people ever assembled in Howard county.
Inside the extensive enclosure the multitude divided itself into streams, ponds, eddies, refluent currents and noisy whirlpools of people. Some rare attraction was everywhere.
Early in the day the eyes of certain of the rustic misses followed admiringly the forms of Jack Trout and Bill Powell, handsome young fellows dressed in homespun clothes, who, arm in arm, strolled leisurely across the grounds, looking sharply about for some proper place to begin the expenditure of what few dimes they had each been able to hoard up against this gala day. They had not long to hunt. On every hand the "hawkers hawked their wares."
Rising and falling, tender-toned, deftly managed, a voice rang out across the crowd pleading with those who had long desired a good investment for their money, and begging them to be sure and not let slip this last golden opportunity.
"Only a half a dollah! Come right along this way now! Here's the great golden scheme by which thousands have amassed untold fortunes! Here's your only and last chance to get two ounces of first class candy, with the probability of five dollars in gold coin, all for the small sum of half a dollah! And the cry is—still they come!"
The speaker was such a man as one often observes in a first class railway car, with a stout valise beside him containing samples, dressed with remarkable care, and ever on the alert to make one's acquaintance. He stood on top of a small table or tripod, holding in his hand a green pasteboard package just taken from a box at his feet.
"Only a half a dollah and a fortune in your grasp! Here's the gold! Roll right this way and run your pockets over!"
Drifting round with the tide of impulsive pleasure seekers into which they happened to fall, Jack Trout and Bill Powell floated past a bevy of lasses, the prettiest of whom was Minny Hart, a girl whose healthy, vivid beauty was fast luring Jack on to the rock of matrimonial proposals.
"Jimminy, but ain't she a little sweety!" exclaimed the latter, pinching Bill's arm as they passed, and glancing lovingly at Minny.
"You're tellin' the truth and talkin' it smooth," replied Bill, bowing to the girls with the swagger peculiar to a rustic who imagines he has turned a fine period. And with fluttering hearts the boys passed on.