The Hickory Fair A man who is past middle life says that the Hickory fair ground, as he recalls it, did not contain more than five or six acres; and the exhibits, so far as numbers are concerned were in keeping with the size of the grounds. There were marshals riding around on horseback with great red sashes across their breasts, and streaming out behind. There was no racing worthy of the name in those days, but the young men and their best girls formed a cavalcade and rode around the one-third mile race track again and again, until some people felt like saying: "It is enough, boys and girls. We have all admired your filleys (sic) and the millinery," in which the girls are togged out and the long yellow dusters which the young men donned to keep the dust from off their tailor-made suits. For the big clothing manufacturers of today--with their ability to fit any sort of a juke that might come along--were not in business then. On the other hand the ready-made clothing of that! day had no more style about it than a "gum coat," and did not come any nearer to fitting the unhappy purchaser that a meal sack comes to fitting a bean pole. But the fair with its "big punkins", (sic) its fine apples, pears, and peaches, and fat cattle and hogs and fine wooled sheep, was the admiration of all. And then the side shows. "The Big Snake from the woods of South America," the birds that sung and picked out the card containing your fortune, and the "peep-show', where for a nickel one could see the Cascade mountains; and many other such like wonders, filled with admiration the minds of boys and girls, and they went home happier and better contented than boys or girls of the present from the Pittsburgh Exposition, or a Wild West show. The gentleman who was talking about the Hickory fair said at the close of his monologue that after all the years there were just two "fairs," or expositions, which loomed large in his mind--one of these was the Hickory fair--and th! e other the World's Fair at Chicago, and of the two as he has them in his mind today, he is inclined to hold that "the Hickory fair" was the larger and more important and more interesting of the two. This proves that early impressions cut deep, and last when many deeper impressions made later in life are faded out and forgotten.--Canonsburg Notes