In another part of the amphitheatre nothing but men, red-faced, excited, standing up on the seats, shouting, applauding, as the rival horses rush round the ring before them. It is not difficult to know who these are. The money streams through their fingers. Did you hear the crack of that pistol? How the crowd swarms angrily. Stand back! A man has been shot. He insulted a gentleman. He called him a liar. Be careful. There are a great many pistols on the fair grounds.
In all the United States where else is there to be seen any such holiday assemblage of people--any such expression of the national life impressed with local peculiarities? Where else is there to be seen anything that, while it falls far behind, approaches so near the spirit of uproarious merriment, of reckless fun, which used to intoxicate and madden the English populace when given over to the sports of a ruder age?
[Illustration: THE JUDGE'S STAND--THE FINISH.]
These are the descendants of the sad pioneers--of those early cavalcades which we glanced at in the primeval forests a few minutes ago. These have subdued the land, and are reclining on its tranquil autumn fulness. Time enough to play now--more time than there ever was before; more than there will ever be again. They have established their great fair here on the very spot where their forefathers were massacred or put to torture. So, at old Smithfield, the tumblers, the jesters, the buffoons, and the dancers shouldered each other in joyful riot over the ashes of the earlier heroes and martyrs.
It is past high noon, and the thousands break away from the amphitheatre and move towards a soft green woodland in another part of the grounds, shaded by forest trees. Here are the private dinner-tables--hundreds of them, covered with snowy linen, glittering with glass and silver. You have heard of Kentucky hospitality; here you will see one of the peaceful battle-fields where reputation for that virtue is fought for and won. Is there a stranger among these thousands that has not been hunted up and provided for? And such dinners! Old Pepys should be here--immortal eater--so that he could go home and set down in his diary, along with other gastronomic adventures, garrulous notes of what he saw eaten and ate himself at the Kentucky fair. You will never see the Kentuckians making a better show than at this moment. What courtesy, what good-will, what warm and gracious manners! Tie a blue ribbon on them. In a competitive exhibition of this kind the premium will stay at home.