FIFTY YEARS OF A 

 SHOWMAN'S LIFE 



CHAPTER I 



A Showman's Jubilee The Manner and Method of these Recollections 

 The Old Agriculturist Early Farming Associations. 



" Life is a leaf of paper white, 

 Whereon each one of us may write 

 His word or two then comes the night." 



NOT long since I unburdened myself of a series 

 of reminiscences, under the title In the 

 Days of Victoria, in which I endeavoured 

 to portray, by the light of personal experience, 

 the ebb and flow of life in a city, its swish and 

 swirl, its toils and its pleasures, during the event- 

 ful Early and Mid-Period of the late Queen's 

 reign. I had to leave the country-side severely 

 alone, or my story would have run to too great a 

 length. But the kindly reception my town recol- 

 lections met with has encouraged me to supple- 

 ment them with a companion-series dealing with 

 my long association with agriculture and its 

 representatives. A jubilee is usually a time for 

 retrospections, and, as my career as an agricultural 

 showman dates from the year 1867, I am only 

 following precedent in regarding a fifty years' 

 anniversary as an occasion for harking back upon 

 the past. 



3 B 2 



