It was the quietest hour of an August afternoon--that time when one seems to have reached "the land where it is always afternoon"--and Aunt Jane and I were sitting on the back porch, shelling butter-beans for the next day's market. Before us lay the garden in the splendid fulness of late summer. Concord and Catawba grapes loaded the vines on the rickety old arbor; tomatoes were ripening in reckless plenty, to be given to the neighbors, or to lie in tempting rows on the window-sill of the kitchen and the shelves of the back porch; the second planting of cucumber vines ran in flowery luxuriance over the space allotted to them, and even encroached on the territory of the squashes and melons. Damsons hung purpling over the eaves of the house, and wasps and bees kept up a lively buzzing as they feasted on the windfalls of the old yellow peach tree near the garden gate. Nature had distributed her sunshine and showers with wise generosity that year, and neither in field nor in garden was there lack of any good thing. Perhaps it was this gracious abundance, presaging fine exhibits at the coming fair, that turned Aunt Jane's thoughts towards the fairs of her youth. "Folks nowadays don't seem to think much about fairs," she continued; "but when I was young a fair was something that the grown folks looked forward to jest like children look for Christmas. The women and the men, too, was gittin' ready for the fair all the year round, the women piecin' quilts and knittin' socks and weavin' carpets and puttin' up preserves and pickles, and the men raisin' fine stock; and when the fair come, it was worth goin' to, child, and worth rememberin' after you'd gone to it.