DEAR PUNCHINELLO:  From early ages, man has been a tiller of the soil.  My ancestors were pretty much all in this line of business.  My venerable great-grandfather-in-law came over in the Mayflower, and though not exactly a tiller himself, he is supposed to have had a good deal to do with the tiller department of that historic ship.  Several of our folks have, from time to time, studied agriculture on New England town farms; which explains the passion I always had for such attractive out-of-door sports as stump-pulling, laying stone wall, and drinking very hard cider in the shade.

Being down at my uncle’s this week, I have attended the Annual County Agricultural Fair.  The managers wanted me to go on one of the committees, (whether it was plain Durhams, or short-horn needle-work, I don’t this moment remember,) but I declined.  I told them that, while I was ready to fill any vacancy that might occur in the “Committee on Bills upon their Second Reading,” they really must excuse me elsewhere.  I finally compromised by accepting a free pass, and agreeing to poke the ribs of all the cattle I could reach, just as though I was a bona fide official.

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.

The turkeys, geese, ducks, poultry and other farm yard habitues, though cooped up in one corner, did all they could to make the show a success.