WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY, in 



fair at the adjacent market town are the two best 

 recognized holidays of the year. The fair is some- 

 times called " the mop," and stalwart girls will walk 

 eight or nine miles rather than miss it. Maidservants 

 in farmhouses always bargain for a holiday on fair- 

 day. These two main fairs are the Bank Holidays 

 of rural life. It is curious to observe that the develop- 

 ments of the age railroads and manufactories have 

 not touched the traditional prestige of these gatherings. 



For instance, you may find a town which, by the 

 incidence of the railroad and the springing up of great 

 industries, has shot far ahead of the other sleepy little 

 places ; its population may treble itself, its trade be 

 ten times as large, its attractions, one would imagine, 

 incalculably greater. Nothing of the kind : its annual 

 fair is not nearly so important an event to the village 

 mind as that of an old-world slumberous place removed 

 from the current of civilization. This place, which is 

 perhaps eight or nine miles by road, with no facilities 

 of communication, has from time immemorial had a 

 reputation for its fair. There, accordingly, the scat- 

 tered rural population wends, making no account of 

 distance and very little of weather : it is a country 

 maxim that it always rains on fair-day, and mostly 

 thunders. There they assemble and enjoy themselves 

 in the old-fashioned way, which consists in standing 

 in the streets, buying " fairings " for the girls, shooting 

 for nuts, visiting all the shows, and so on. 



To push one's way through such a crowd is no 

 simple matter : the countryman does not mean to be 



