Oh, how it rained and rained for days and days before the one appointed for the fair, and how many anxious eyes were turned up towards the clouds which looked so heavy and gray and pitiless, as if they never intended to stop raining again! It was hard to believe that behind the dark mass the sun was still shining, and the children watched in vain for the “silver lining” which is said to invest every cloud. But it appeared at last on the very day of the fair, and patches of blue sky showed here and there in the heavens, and before noon the October sun was drying the walks and the wet grass, and brightening up the little faces which for days had been overcast with gloom. The fair was to be held at a private house, and I wish you could have seen the multitude of pretty things which came pouring in, until the Brown Cottage looked like one great bazaar of toys and fancy articles. There were cushions of pink and cushions of blue, and penwipers and book-racks, and a beautiful whirling butterfly which Lulu bought on Broadway, and needle-books and spool-cases, and tidies of various devices and colors, with mittens and gloves, and fanciful lines with tinkling bells attached, and I know a little boy, among the Massachusetts hills, who to-day drives his miniature horses, of which he has forty or more, with a pair of those very lines. Then there were toys of every description sent from New York by Susie Ganson’s mother, and spread out upon the tables in the upper room, whose glass door looked into the garden. There were jumping-jacks, which turned the boys wild, and churns, which made the little girls scream with delight. There were washbowls and tubs, tin-kitchens and rolling-pins, and bars to dry the dolly’s clothes on, and chairs, and tables, and dishes, with balls and canes, and old Santa Claus himself bearing his Christmas-tree with the gifts to put upon it. There was a negro, too, with his woolly head and calico frock, looking so life-like and real that some of the smaller children drew back from him in terror, fancying he was alive.