"I hear folks talkin' about the fair every year, and I laugh to myself and I say, 'You folks don't know what a fair is.' And I set out there on my porch fair week and watch the buggies and wagons goin' by in the mornin' and comin' home at night, and I git right happy, thinkin' about the time when me and Abram and the children used to go over the same road to the fair, but a mighty different sort of fair from what they have nowadays. One thing is, honey, they have the fairs too soon. It never was intended for folks to go to fairs in hot weather, and here they've got to havin' 'em the first week in September, about the hottest, driest, dustiest time of the whole year. Nothin' looks pretty then, and it always makes me think o' folks when they've been wearin' their summer clothes for three months, and everything's all faded and dusty and drabbled. That's the way it generally is in September. But jest wait till two or three good rains come, and everything's washed clean and sweet, and the trees look like they'd got a new set o' leaves, and the grass comes out green and fresh like it does in the spring, and the nights and the mornin's feel cool, though it's hot enough in the middle o' the day; and maybe there'll come a touch of early frost, jest enough to turn the top leaves on the sugar maples. That's October, child, and that's the time for a fair. "Lord, the good times I've seen in them days! Startin' early and comin' home late, with the sun settin' in front of you, and by and by the moon comin' up behind you, and the wind blowin' cool out o' the woods on the side o' the road; the baby fast asleep in my arms, and the other children talkin' with each other about what they'd seen, and Abram drivin' slow over the rough places, and lookin' back every once in a while to see if we was all there. It's a curious thing, honey; I liked fairs as well as anybody, and I reckon I saw all there was to be seen, and heard everything there was to be heard every time I went to one. But now, when I git to callin' 'em up, it appears to me that the best part of it all, and the part I ricollect the plainest, was jest the goin' there and the comin' back home. "Abram knew I liked to stay till everything was over, and he'd git somebody to water and feed the stock, and then I never had any hot suppers to git while the fair lasted; so there wasn't anything to hurry me and Abram. I ricollect Maria Petty come up one day about five o'clock, jest as we was lookin' at the last race, and says she, 'I'm about to drop, Jane; but I believe I'd ruther stay here and sleep on the floor o' the amp'itheater than to go home and cook a hot supper.' And I says, 'Don't cook a hot supper, then.' And says she, 'Why, Silas wouldn't eat a piece o' cold bread at home to save his life or mine either.'