Along about sun-up you hear the big farm-wagons clattering into town, chairs in the wagon bed, and Paw, and Maw, and Mary Elizabeth, and Martin Luther, and all the family, clean down to Teedy, the baby. He's named after Theodore Roosevelt, and they have the letter home now, framed and hanging up over the organ. But for all the wagon is so full, there is room for a big basket covered with a red-ended towel. (Seems to me I smell fried chicken, don't you?) I just thought I'dt see if you'd bite. You've formed your notions of country people from “The Old Homestead” and these by-gosh-Mirandy novels. The real farmers, nowadays, drive into town in double-seated carriages with matched bays, curried so that you can see to comb your hair in their glossy sides. The single rigs sparkle in the sun, conveying young men and young women of such clean-cut, high-bred features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and there is such a thing as a mail-order business in this country, even if you aren't aware of it. All the little boys in town are out with their baskets chanting sadly: PEANUTS? FIVE A BAG You 'll hear that all day long. But there isn't much going on before the excursion trains come in. Then things begin to hop. The grand marshal and his aides gallop through the streets as if they were going for the doctor. The trains of ten and fifteen coaches pile up in the railroad yard, and the yardmaster nearly goes out of his mind. People are so anxious to get out of the cars, in which they have been packed and jammed for hours, that they don't mind a little thing like being run over by a switching engine. Every platform is just one solid chunk of summer hats and babies and red shirts and alto horns. They have been nearly five hours coming fifty miles. Stopped at every station and sidetracked for all the regular trains. Such a time! Lots of fun, though. The fellows got out and pulled flowers, and seed cucumbers, and things and threw them at folks. You never saw such cut-ups as they are. Pretty good singers, too. Good part of the way, they sung “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and “How Can I Bear to Leave Thee,” nice and slow, you know, a good deal of tenor and not much bass, and plenty of these “minor chords.” (Yes, I know, some people call them “barber-shop chords,” but I think “minor” is a nicer name.) The band played “Hiawatha” eighteen times. One old fellow got on at Huntsville, and he says, to Joe Bangs (that's the leader), “Shay,” he says, “play 'Turkey in er Straw,' won't you? Aw, go on. Play it. Thass goof feller. Go on.”