. Vanishing England . which also plays a hideous organ thatgrinds out popular tunes, swings, stalls, shows, menage-ries, and all the fun of the fair. You can see biographs,hear phonographs, and a penny-in-the-slot will introduceyou to wonderful sights, and have your fortune told, orshy at coco-nuts or Aunt Sally, or witness displays ofboxing, or have a photograph taken of yourself, or watchweird melodramas, and all for a penny or two. No won-der the fair is popular. There is no reverence paid in these modern gatherings toold-fashioned ways and ancient picturesque customs, butin some places the
. Vanishing England . which also plays a hideous organ thatgrinds out popular tunes, swings, stalls, shows, menage-ries, and all the fun of the fair. You can see biographs,hear phonographs, and a penny-in-the-slot will introduceyou to wonderful sights, and have your fortune told, orshy at coco-nuts or Aunt Sally, or witness displays ofboxing, or have a photograph taken of yourself, or watchweird melodramas, and all for a penny or two. No won-der the fair is popular. There is no reverence paid in these modern gatherings toold-fashioned ways and ancient picturesque customs, butin some places these are still observed with punctiliousexactness. The quaint custom of proclaiming the fair at Honiton, in Devonshire, is observed every year, thetown having obtained the grant of a fair from the lord ofthe manor so long ago as 1257. The fair still retainssome of the picturesque characteristics of bygone town crier, dressed in old-world uniform, and carry-ing a pole decorated with gay flowers and surmounted by. 362 VANISHING ENGLAND a large gilt model of a gloved hand, publicly announcesthe opening of the fair as follows : Oyez ! Oyez ! Oyez !The fairs begun, the glove is up. No man can be arrestedtill the o-love is taken down. Hot coins are then thrownamongst the children. The pole and glove remain dis-played until the end of the fair. Nor have all the practical uses of fairs vanished. Onthe Berkshire downs is the little village of West Ilsley ;there from time immemorial great sheep fairs are held,and flocks are brought thither from districts far and year herds of Welsh ponies congregate at Black-water, in Hampshire, driven thither by inveterate year in an open field near Cambridge the oncegreat Stourbridge fair is held, first granted by KingJohn to the Hospital for Lepers, and formerly proclaimedwith great state by the Vice-Chancellor of the Universityand the Mayor of Cambridge. This was one of the largestfairs in Europe. Merchants of all natio
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