ABSTRACT OF REPORTS. 
205 
“ The speaker’s stand, a large square, covered platform, 
erected in the centre of the enclosure, was ornamented with 
flags, and appropriate mottoes, and surrounded with seats for 
the multitude, which, during the address and declaring of 
awards thronged about to the number of five to ten thousand. 
“ The riding and trotting came off in the afternoon, and were 
witnessed by some 8,000 delighted spectators. In the trotting 
match, “ David Hill,” the same that afterward took the first 
premium at the State Fair, won the prize. 
“ Among the new features of this mammoth Fair, there are 
several with which we were particularly pleased. First, the 
grounds are fitted up in particularly attractive style. Secondly, 
premiums were offered for many things not absolutely agricul¬ 
tural, but well calculated, by their essentiality to a true social 
life, to exert a refining influence upon the too rigid and stoical 
farmer. We would not have the substantial products of the 
farm and workshop superseded by works of art, nor would we 
have the useful encouraged to the exclusion of the beautiful. 
The more the people of the town can be brought into contact 
with the real producers of the country, and the people of the 
rural districts with the refinements of city life, without either 
forsaking their proper sphere, the better for both ; the pale- 
faced, aristocratic dweller in the city will learn to respect and 
foster that noble, primal art upon which his own existence and 
the life and business of the world depend ; and the sturdy, hard- 
fisted old farmer will more fully appreciate the truth that it is 
not all of life—even the farmer’s life—to produce fat calves and 
big potatoes, and plod like an ox from the cradle to the grave. 
Our advice, then, to all agricultural societies would be to 
make agriculture pre-eminent, but to avail themselves of those 
refining influences which, while they heighten the immediate 
interest of public exhibitions, also promote the amenities of 
the farming life. 
“ In addition to the five bands of music, already referred to, 
there was vocal music of a high order, as any of our readers 
who heard the ‘ Farmer’s Home’ by the Badger Club, at the 
State Fair, will be prepared to believe. 
