The feasts are in some cases identified with certain well-recognised events in the calendar of nature; such as the ripening of cherries. It may be noticed that these, chancing thus to correspond pretty accurately on the average with the state of fruit, are kept up more vigorously than those which have no such aid to the memory. The Lady-Day fair and Michaelmas fair at the adjacent market town are the two best recognised holidays of the year. The fair is sometimes called `the mop,' and stalwart girls will walk eight or nine miles rather than miss it. Maidservants in farmhouses always bargain for a holiday on fair day. These two main fairs are the Bank Holidays of rural life. It is curious to observe that the developments of the age, railroads and manufactories, have not touched the traditional prestige of these gatherings. For instance, you may find a town which, by the incidence of the railroad and the springing up of great industries, has shot far ahead of the other sleepy little places; its population may treble itself, its trade be ten times as large, its attractions one would imagine incalculably greater. Nothing of the kind: its annual fair is not nearly so important an event to the village mind as that of an old-world slumberous place removed from the current of civilisation. This place, which is perhaps eight or nine miles by road, with no facilities of communication, has from time immemorial had a reputation for its fair. There, accordingly, the scattered rural population wends, making no account of distance and very little of weather: it is a country maxim that it always rains on fair day, and mostly thunders. There they assemble and enjoy themselves in the old-fashioned way, which consists in standing in the streets, buying `fairings' for the girls, shooting for nuts, visiting all the shows, and so on. To push one's way through such a crowd is no simple matter; the countryman does not mean to be rude, but he has not the faintest conception that politeness demands a little yielding. He has to be shoved, and makes no objection. A city crowd is to a certain extent mobile--each recognises that he must give way. A country crowd stand stock still. The thumping of drums, the blaring of trumpets, the tootling of pan-pipes in front of the shows, fill the air with a din which may be heard miles away, and seem to give the crowd intense pleasure--far more than the crack band of the Coldstream Guards could impart. Nor are they ever weary of gazing at the `pelican of the wilderness' as the showman describes it--a mournful bird with draggled feathers standing by the entrance, a traditional part of his stock-in-trade. One attraction-- perhaps the strongest--may be found in the fact that all the countryside is sure to be there. Each labourer or labouring woman will meet acquaintances from distant villages they have not seen or heard of for months. The rural gossip of half a county will be exchanged.