use someday sartin.'

'Wall he's a good jedge o' gals anyway,' said Uncle Eb.

As for myself I was now hopelessly confirmed in my dislike of farming
and I never traded horses again.

Chapter 23

Late in August Uncle Eb and I took our Black Hawk stallion to the fair
in Hillsborough and showed him for a prize. He was fit for the eye of a
king when we had finished grooming him, that morning, and led him out,
rearing in play, his eyes flashing from under his broad plume, so that
all might have a last look at him. His arched neck and slim barrel
glowed like satin as the sunlight fell upon him. His black mane flew, he
shook the ground with his hoofs playing at the halter's end. He hated a
harness and once in it lost half his conceit. But he was vainest of all
things in Faraway when we drove off with him that morning.

All roads led to Hillsborough fair time. Up and down the long hills we
went on a stiff jog passing lumber wagons with generations enough in
them to make a respectable genealogy, the old people in chairs; light
wagons that carried young men and their sweethearts, backswoodsmen
coming out in ancient vehicles upon reeling, creaking wheels to get food
for a year's reflection--all thickening the haze of the late summer with
the dust of the roads. And Hillsborough itself was black with people.
The shouts of excited men, the neighing of horses, the bellowing of
cattle, the wailing of infants, the howling of vendors, the pressing
crowd, had begun to sow the seed of misery in the minds of those
accustomed only to the peaceful quietude of the farm. The staring eye,
the palpitating heart, the aching head, were successive stages in the
doom of many. The fair had its floral hall carpeted with sawdust and
redolent of cedar, its dairy house, its mechanics' hall sacred to
farming implements, its long sheds full of sheep and cattle, its
dining-hall, its temporary booths of rough lumber, its half-mile track
and grandstand. Here voices of beast and vendor mingled in a chorus of
cupidity and distress. In Floral Hall Sol Rollin was on exhibition. He
gave me a cold nod, his lips set for a tune as yet inaudible. He was
surveying sundry examples of rustic art that hung on the circular
railing of the gallery and trying to preserve a calm breast. He was
looking at Susan Baker's painted cow that hung near us.

'Very descriptive,' he said when I pressed him for his notion of it.
'Rod Baker's sister Susan made thet cow. Gits tew d