s in the wagon bed, and Paw, and Maw, and Mary Elizabeth, and
Martin Luther, and all the family, clean down to Teedy, the baby. He's
named after Theodore Roosevelt, and they have the letter home now,
framed and hanging up over the organ. But for all the wagon is so full,
there is room for a big basket covered with a red-ended towel. (Seems to
me I smell fried chicken, don't you?)

I just thought I'dt see if you'd bite. You've formed your notions
of country people from "The Old Homestead" and these by-gosh-Mirandy
novels. The real farmers, nowadays, drive into town in double-seated
carriages with matched bays, curried so that you can see to comb
your hair in their glossy sides. The single rigs sparkle in the sun,
conveying young men and young women of such clean-cut, high-bred
features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should
wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows
run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are
almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their
clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember
that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and
there is such a thing as a mail-order business in this country, even if
you aren't aware of it.

All the little boys in town are out with their baskets chanting sadly:

PEANUTS? FIVE A BAG

You 'll hear that all day long.

But there isn't much going on before the excursion trains come in. Then
things begin to hop. The grand marshal and his aides gallop through
the streets as if they were going for the doctor. The trains of ten and
fifteen coaches pile up in the railroad yard, and the yardmaster nearly
goes out of his mind. People are so anxious to get out of the cars, in
which they have been packed and jammed for hours, that they don't mind
a little thing like being run over by a switching engine. Every platform
is just one solid chunk of summer hats and babies and red shirts and
alto horns. They have been nearly five hours coming fifty miles. Stopped
at every station and sidetracked for all the regular trains. Such a
time! Lots of fun, though. The fellows got out and pulled flowers, and
seed cucumbers, and things and threw them at folks. You never saw such
cut-ups as they are. Pretty good singers, too. Good part of the way,
they sung "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and "How Can I Bear to Leave
Thee," nice and slow,