Early in the morning the beggars begin to arrive, the lame and the blind, with or without a musical instrument. King of them all certainly is he with no legs at all and seeming not to need them, so active is he on a four-wheeled plank which suspends him only a foot above the ground. Many a strong man earns less money. The children envy him as he moves along, a wheeled animal, weather-beaten, white-haired, white-bearded, with neat black hat and white slop, a living toy, but with a deep voice, a concertina and a tin full of pence and halfpence. These unashamed curiosities line the chief approaches, down which every one is going to the fair except a few shabby fellows who offer blue sheets full of music-hall ballads to the multitude and, with a whisper, indecent songs to the select. Another not less energetic, but stout and condescending, yellow-bearded, in a high hard felt hat, gives away tracts. The sound of a hymn from one organ mingles with the sound of “Put me among the girls” from another and the rattle of the legless man’s offertory-tin. The main part of the fair consists of a double row, a grove, of tents and booths, roundabouts, caravans, traps and tethered ponies. A crowd of dark-clad women goes up and down between the rows: there is a sound of machine-made music, of firing at targets, of shouts and neighs and brays and the hoot of engines. Here at the entrance to the grove is a group of yellow vans; some children playing among the shafts and wheels and musing horses; and a gypsy woman on a stool, her head on one side, combing her black hair and talking to the children, while a puppy catches at the end of her tresses when they come swishing down. Beyond are cocoanut-shies, short-sighted cyclists performing, Aunt Sallies, rows of goldfish bowls into which a light ball has to be pitched to earn a prize, stalls full of toys, cheap jewellery and sweets like bedded-out plants, and stout women pattering alongside--bold women, with sleek black or yellow hair and the bearing and countenance of women who have to make their way in the world. Behind these, women are finishing their toilet and their children’s among the vans, preparing meals over red crackling fires, and the horses rest their noses on the stalls and watch the crowd; the long yellow dogs are curled up among the wheels or nosing in the crowd.