CHAPiN'’s Address. 
379 
wagon? the long sled? Where the spinning wheel? the distaff? the 
hand cards? the loom? the fire place? the hand irons? the crane? 
the d^^e tub? the brick oven? Where the well sweep? the old oak¬ 
en bucket that hung in the well? Where the hard bluish green 
crab apples that grew on the flat? the natural fruit? Where the old 
fashioned reds and merino potatoes? They have gone — all gone — 
never more to return! Go over these grounds, through these build¬ 
ings, on the track. You see a live fair, you see modern articles on 
exhibition. You see products of the season, selected and prepared 
for the fair. You see animals groomed, trained or fattened to please 
the eye. You see new machinery, farm implements which were 
never used in the field. Things of the present — the pride and 
spirit of 1876! You look in vain for things (>f the past; if any you 
find, they have the new improvements properly adjusted. You look 
in vain for rusty machinery, for poor animals, for rejected wheat, 
unfilled corn, bleached barley, shrunken oats, gnarly fruit, decayed 
or withered vegetables, tainted lard, strong butter, musty bread or 
skimmed milk cheese. These are not at fairs, although they are 
sometimes found in the market. 
THE boys’ hoe. 
Neither do you find at the fair the worthless old hoe, which the 
boy so industriously used and manfully kept up with the man. If 
not at fairs it is not forgotten. Well do I remember the hoe I used 
when a boy. It was heavy, dull and rusty; it had a badly battered 
eye, a handspike for a handle, a slippery wedge, with nearly a 
pound of lo gand short nails to support the wedge; this to keep the 
hoe on the handle, and even then the handle had a weakness to turn 
at the eye; and with this formidable implement of husbandry it was 
expected that I should keep up with the men, who used the swan- 
neck light steel hoe. Then too, that old corn cutter, a piece of bro¬ 
ken scythe stuck into six or eight inches of apple tree limb, f;;r a 
handle. These implements are never seen at fairs, are never 
“ brought out ” as the good Sunday school teacher says, only when 
work begins. These “ banged up ” farm implements, and the old 
sheep skin which the good and faithful farmer boy straddled while 
riding horse to plow out corn under a scorching sun, are economi¬ 
cally put aside and kept for another purpose. 
