AGRICULTURAL FAIRS AND THEIR PURPOSES. 61 



dies. The four year old boy cannot now draw his baby brother 

 without some one to cry, go ; while, for a month after the fair, 

 Tom, Dick and Harry sit in solemn conclave, and spit tobacco 

 over the question, whether Brown's sorrel wouldn't have come 

 in first if she had not lost her shoe, some one of the gentry of 

 the lash occasionally routing their small opinions by a louder 

 oath and a more professional air. The horse-race is now 

 " drawing " in such shape that things are likely to come to a 

 head. Some begin to inquire, why not all horse-race and no 

 cattle-show, since this is what we really like ? Others — the so- 

 ber, intelligent farmers — bitterly disappointed in the results, are 

 asking, why maintain a fair in which the hall is deserted for the 

 track, and a few women and old men are all that are left at the 

 speaker's stand ? David Crockett was said to be " half horse, half 

 alligator." I never quite believed it, for 1 fancied the alligator 

 would have eaten up the horse, and he would shortly have be- 

 come all alligator. Thus a fair half cattle-show and half horse- 

 race is in a state of unstable equilibrium. The horses run away 

 with the fruit and cattle, and it is soon all horse-race. It has 

 happened to some fairs within our knowledge to spawn a race- 

 course, and die in the effort ; and more than one has found their 

 progeny competing with them in hot rivalry. If an agricul- 

 tural fair gives itself to amusing and intoxicating, instead of 

 sobering and instructing the populace, it will soon find that oth- 

 ers can outstrip it in this race, and that professionals are quite 

 in advance in their own line of business. The jockey will stoop 

 to the fair when he can get nothing better, but becomes at once 

 ambitious of an independent course. 



The New York State Fair has steadily prospered, because it 

 has kept aloof from the race, and given large and profitable de- 

 velopment to all improvements, implements, agricultural ma- 

 chines. Many of her county fairs, on the other hand, poor in 

 these means of instruction, have yielded themselves up to the 

 race, and become of little interest and value. I would like to 

 inquire, in this connection, why the Bennington race-course 

 came up as the Bennington fair went down ? and whether the 

 feebleness of the Hampden Society has not kept company with 

 an increase of the horse distemper ? 



We do not, then, object to this intimate association of the 

 race-course with the fair because amusement is thus furnished, 



