CHAPTER VI 



The Festive Side of Agriculture Carving Simplified Speech and 

 Song Lemonade and Gin. 



AND now, having referred to the more prosaic 

 side of a showman's life, I will say some- 

 thing of its lighter aspect and of the 

 company I kept. 



There was a good deal more public eating and 

 drinking forty or fifty years ago among agricul- 

 turists than now, for advantage was taken of 

 every possible excuse for meeting round a festive 

 board. Of course, the war has stopped most of 

 such gatherings, but before ever the war was 

 dreamt of the dimensions and number of agri- 

 cultural dinner-parties had lessened. In addition 

 to the ordinary Agricultural Society dinners, there 

 used to be what were termed pleuro-pneumonia 

 dinners, when members of a sort of Insurance 

 Society against live-stock diseases met to cast up 

 accounts ; Christmas dinners, at which all who 

 attended the weekly ordinaries at certain hostelries 

 foregathered, the landlord supplying the eatables 

 at his own expense, while the company paid for 

 the drinks ; hunt dinners ; ram-fair dinners : 

 ploughing- match dinners, and many others. They 

 mostly began at two o'clock, and often went on 

 till long after dark. They were Gargantuan 



51 



