The show began yesterday with a grand concourse of all the farming
people for miles around. Every farmer brought a pair of hands with him.
The teams were innumerable; I had no idea it was such a teeming
population. There was a procession of yokes of oxen, a brass band, the
living skeleton, two fire engines, citizens generally, the Orator of the
Day, more oxen, marshals in cowhide boots and badges, and a cavalcade.
There may have been other oxen. I did not intend to omit them.

The Orator was announced in the bills as "a finished speaker." He
managed to get himself so thoroughly mixed up with his subject, however,
and knew so much about farming, which he was willing to disclose, that I
soon saw he couldn't be safely set down as finished till late in the
afternoon. I don't recall much of his address, further than that, when
he got to talking about Fall Ploughing, he said: "In the hour of his
country's peril, if fall he must, he would a little rather fall
ploughing, than in any other way!" I think, too, he spoke of the Fates
always smiling upon the farmer who improved his soil. I suppose he meant
the phosphates.

To-day I have been all around the cattle pens. I never saw such stock
before. Owing to their habit of staying out in the country the year
round, they have a firm, sleek, animated look which the best guaranteed
city stock fails to attain. One cow, from her impartial method of
hoisting visitors out of her pasture, was labelled "The General Hooker."

There was a fine display of Dorking lambs and Jersey hens, while some
bees of the Berkshire breed fairly divided the honors with a few very
choice Merino pigs. A handsomely built North Devon chain-pump attracted
much attention from the milkmen.