" You can see biographs, hear phonographs,
and a penny-in-the-slot will introduce you to wonderful sights, and
have your fortune told, or shy at coco-nuts or Aunt Sally, or witness
displays of boxing, or have a photograph taken of yourself, or watch
weird melodramas, and all for a penny or two. No wonder the fair is
popular.
[Illustration: Outside The "Lamb Inn". Burford, Oxon]
There is no reverence paid in these modern gatherings to old-fashioned
ways and ancient picturesque customs, but in some places these are
still observed with punctilious exactness. The quaint custom of
"proclaiming the fair" at Honiton, in Devonshire, is observed every
year, the town having obtained the grant of a fair from the lord of
the manor so long ago as 1257. The fair still retains some of the
picturesque characteristics of bygone days. The town crier, dressed in
old-world uniform, and carrying a pole decorated with gay flowers and
surmounted by a large gilt model of a gloved hand, publicly
announces the opening of the fair as follows: "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The
fair's begun, the glove is up. No man can be arrested till the glove
is taken down." Hot coins are then thrown amongst the children. The
pole and glove remain displayed until the end of the fair.
Nor have all the practical uses of fairs vanished.
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