With this brief outline we may pass over the next twenty years. The current of State life during this interval ran turbulent and stormy. Now politics, now finance, imbittered and distressed the people. Time and again, here and there, small societies revived the fair, but all efforts to expand it were unavailing. And yet this period must be distinguished as the one during which the necessity of the fair became widely recognized; for it taught the Kentuckians that their chief interest lay in the soil, and that physical nature imposed upon them the agricultural type of life. Grass was to be their portion and their destiny. It taught them the insulation of their habitat, and the need of looking within their own society for the germs and laws of their development. As soon as the people came to see that they were to be a race of farmers, it is important to note their concern that, as such, they should be hedged with respectability. They took high ground about it; they would not cease to be gentlemen; they would have their class well reputed for fat pastures and comfortable homes, but honored as well for manners and liberal intelligence. And to this end they had recourse to an agricultural literature. Thus, when the fair began to revive, with happier auspices, near the close of the period under consideration, they signalized it for nearly the quarter of a century afterwards by instituting literary contests. Prizes and medals were offered for discoveries and inventions which should be of interest to the Kentucky agriculturist; and hundreds of dollars were appropriated for the victors and the second victors in the writing of essays which should help the farmer to become a scientist and not to forget to remain a gentleman. In addition, they sometimes sat for hours in the open air while some eminent citizen--the Governor, if possible--delivered an address to commemorate the opening of the fair, and to review the progress of agricultural life in the commonwealth. But there were many anti-literarians among them, who conceived a sort of organized hostility to what they aspersed as book-farming, and on that account withheld their cordial support. [Illustration: PRODUCTS Of THE SOIL.] III It was not until about the year 1840 that the fair began to touch-the heart of the whole people. Before this time there had been no amphitheatre, no music, no booths, no side-shows, no ladies. A fair without ladies! How could the people love it, or ever come to look upon it as their greatest annual occasion for love-making?