t the sledge-hammer throwing, now at the candy-booth.
We were comical figures, with our long trousers, thick gray coats and
faded hats, but we didn't know it and were happy.

One day as Burton and I were wandering about on the fair grounds we came
upon a patent medicine cart from which a faker, a handsome fellow with
long black hair and an immense white hat, was addressing the crowd while
a young and beautiful girl with a guitar in her lap sat in weary
relaxation at his feet. A third member of the "troupe," a short and very
plump man of commonplace type, was handing out bottles. It was "Doctor"
Lightner, vending his "Magic Oil."

At first I perceived only the doctor whose splendid gray suit and
spotless linen made the men in the crowd rustic and graceless, but as I
studied the woman I began to read into her face a sadness, a weariness,
which appealed to my imagination. Who was she? Why was she there? I had
never seen a girl with such an expression. She saw no one, was
interested in nothing before her--and when her master, or husband, spoke
to her in a low voice, she raised her guitar and joined in the song
which he had started, all with the same air of weary disgust. Her
voice, a childishly sweet soprano, mingled with the robust baritone of
the doctor and the shouting tenor of the fat man, like a thread of
silver in a skein of brass.

I forgot my dusty clothes, my rough shoes,--I forgot that I was a boy.
Absorbed and dreaming I listened to these strange new songs and studied
the singular faces of these alien songsters. Even the shouting tenor had
a far-away gleam in the yellow light of his cat-like eyes. The leader's
skill, the woman's grace and the perfect blending of their voices made
an ineffaceable impression on my sensitive, farm-bred brain.

The songs which they sang were not in themselves of a character to
warrant this ecstasy in me. One of them ran as follows:

O Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was black as jet,
In the little old log cabin in the lane;
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb went too, you bet.
In the little old log cabin in the lane.

In the little old log cabin O!
The little old log cabin O!
The little old log cabin in the lane,
They're hangin' men and women now
For singing songs like this
In the little old log cabin in the lane.

Nevertheless I listened without a smile. It was art to me. It gave me
s