made a disposition of our various charges.

A great crowd of people was pouring through the gate of the enclosure.
Fully four thousand people were already on the grounds; and a gaudy
array of "side shows" at once attracted our attention. There were
counters and carts for cider, gingerbread and confectionery. Loud-voiced
auctioneers were selling "patent medicines" and knickknacks of all
sorts.

Close at hand, a snare drum and fife, inside a tent, drew attention to
"a rare and wonderful show of wild animals," which the fakir at the door
declared to consist of "a pair of bald eagles, two panther cubs, a
prairie wolf and Hindoo seal," and sometimes he said "prairie wolf and
Bengal tiger."

Then there were rather disreputable fellows with "whirl-boards" at "ten
cents a whirl;" with "ring-boards" at "five cents a pitch," and ten
cents made when you lodged the rings on the points. There was also a
blind-fold professor of phrenology, who examined heads at fifteen cents
_per cranium_.

In the crowd, too, were even less reputable fellows, who sought to
entrap rural youths into "betting on cards," and making "rare bargains"
in delusive watches. Altogether it was an animated scene, for young
eyes. Addison, Halse and Theodora were occupied with their "booth."
Ellen and Wealthy were with Gram in the Fair building, where the fruit
and dairy products had to be watched and presided over. The Old Squire
was a member of numerous committees on stock and other farm exhibits. We
hardly caught sight of him during the day. For my own part I kept with
Thomas and "Tige," whose little wagon for racing we had brought down in
one of the ox-carts. We avoided the sharpers, for the good reason that
we had very little money in our pockets. We were cheated but once, by a
youthful Philistine who had "tumblers to break," suspended in a row by a
string.

We paid him ten cents, and standing off at a distance of forty feet,
threw a nicely-whittled club at the row of suspended glasses. If we
broke one, we were to receive twenty-five cents. The safety of the
tumblers lay in the extreme lightness of the clubs, which were of dry
pine wood, much lighter than their size indicated. Tom and I each threw
the clubs twice. Not a tumbler was injured. The proprietor called it a
"game of skill;" but it was nearer a game of swindling.

But the slow race and scrub race were the features that interested us
most. In explanation I may say that a "slow race" is not an un