ized: some of them were for the
benefit of the agricultural society; some were for the poor, and others
on individual account: and they always thrive; for the German, above
all others, loves to try his luck. There were streets of shanties, where
various things were offered for sale besides cheese and sausages. There
was a long line of booths, where images could be shot at with bird-guns;
and when the shots were successful, the images went through astonishing
revolutions. There was a circus, in front of which some of the spangled
performers always stood beating drums and posturing, in order to entice
in spectators. There were the puppet-booths, before which all day stood
gaping, delighted crowds, who roared with laughter whenever the little
frau beat her loutish husband about the head, and set him to tend the
baby, who continued to wail, notwithstanding the man knocked its head
against the doorpost. There were the great beer-restaurants, with
temporary benches and tables' planted about with evergreens, always
thronged with a noisy, jolly crowd. There were the fires, over which
fresh fish were broiling on sticks; and, if you lingered, you saw the
fish taken alive from tubs of water standing by, dressed and spitted and
broiling before the wiggle was out of their tails. There were the old
women, who mixed the flour and fried the brown cakes before your eyes,
or cooked the fragrant sausage, and offered it piping hot.

And every restaurant and show had its band, brass or string,--a full
array of red-faced fellows tooting through horns, or a sorry quartette,
the fat woman with the harp, the lean man blowing himself out through
the clarinet, the long-haired fellow with the flute, and the robust and
thick-necked fiddler. Everywhere there was music; the air was full
of the odor of cheese and cooking sausage; so that there was nothing
wanting to the most complete enjoyment. The crowd surged round, jammed
together, in the best possible humor. Those who could not sit at tables
sat on the ground, with a link of an eatable I have already named in
one hand, and a mug of beer beside them. Toward evening, the ground was
strewn with these gray quart mugs, which gave as perfect evidence of the
battle of the day as the cannon-balls on the sand before Fort Fisher
did of the contest there. Besides this, for the amusement of the crowd,
there is, every day, a wheelbarrow race, a sack race, a blindfold
contest, or something of the sort, which tur