The news & observer., 1905-11-05
Some Wayside Glimpses
of the Show.
SNAPPY FOOT BALL
Shaw Defeated st. Augustine by 5 II
O. How the White Visitor Felt
Among the Negroes. Fair Of The
CoIored People a Remark
able Development.

With which it was distinguished. i
IS gratifying that the crowds were
black, that the people who attended
the fair were of the color for which
it was intended. and that it was q
negro far.
l shall not attempt to go into the de-
ails of the exhibits, but merely &c
oint out some of the things that make
he fair Of the colored people a re-
markable development: if it could be
impressed upon the people that this
ccasion is held happily, yet soberly
With the spirit of a carnival without
its RIGHTEOUSNESS, with proper PRIDE
and a wholesome self-respect, the
ruth is MeI. worth the putting tL
paper.
In a way it is strange thing for a
lone white man to go to this fair He
.nters and Immediately there flows
about him a crowd of people of the
other color, people who are in a way
conducting their own peculiar affairs
who are engaged in the business OF
getting away for a season from the
ace question by themselves and seek
ing the simple pleasures that cling
about the association of ones kind
In such gathering a man has feel
.ng of sympathy for the crowds which
is common justice. At the same time
&c feels apprenen5 We. How will this
Il en- crowd treat him-a stranger. of
L different color? Before he goes to
see, he heSitates. 1t is d feeling in
stinctive rather than personal. yet still
an emotion that comes from the bot
tom. Here is the crowd: here is the
White man. What is he to do?
Ihf question is SoOn solved The
crowds make way as he passes, and
strangest part. What the white man
has been hugging to his breast as a
iitficulty disappears. He walks
through crowded halls without brush
Of his coat If he stops at an exhibit,
the attention Of the manager is his.
AS he Iasses through the crowd, he
has the comforting sense that, while
the throng has recognized in a way
mis- alien personality, it has at the
same time treated hlm as d friend,
and not as curiosity. There are
no eyes in his back. The position is
understood and appreciated. There
is no undue familiarity attempted, no
hostility d splayed. The white man is
understood as the crowd understands
itself. The courtesy of the negro fair
from an instructive feeling and adjust
ment of differences.
The writer went to the fair as an eX-
pertinent He went with friend. If
there is d scord with the impression
here expressed he would be glad to
hear from his companion, who went
with him and saw with him. If there
was a jar in the several hours spent
on the grounds it did not come from
the co!or"d population and the col
ored population constituted far ex-
ceeding nine hundred per cent of the
crowd
AS bird 's-eye reviewers we paid a
general regard to the exhibits. OF
these there were many, floral hall was
filled with thtem. We walked through
however. hunting for the 'punkin." "
1t would not be a fair without It's
"punkin'' and we hunted for the fair
first. on the way, however, there
was encountered an old time darkey
in a white apron framed in booth
hung with lace curtains. Evidently he
was of the old issue. He explainen
that he was there representing a cur
tain cleaning process: that the snowy
dimities with which he was surround
ed were once of the blackness of ink;
that the priestess of the art was alb
sent but that she was a wonder; that.
"uv course he didn't know the
"secrut' and if he did he couldn't tell
us.
incidentally the black keeper of
this booth, whose white apron made
his honest color glisten. contided that
his apron was the sign of his steward
ship in that he was a purveyor of
ice cream-witness a freezer-which.
however, he was sad to relate was
empty. Whereat he laughed like a
-shucking with a solitary tooth
protruding like a tusk over the red
ness of his under Zip, and there was
peace in the world.
Soon after the gentlemen of the
lace curtains we did run across the
man of the "punkin." Proudly he sat
among his vegetables and well might
he rejoice. 1t was like a street car
OF a popular suop which
isidevised for impecunious people with
d modicum of cash and a plethora
of hot water all the products Of
farm and field. The yellow pun
kins' were there, several of them,
great, big, glistening. There was corn
and wheat and rye and barley and
cotton and cane and the grass that
grows ten feet higher and makes hay,
and the meal from the corn and the
flour from the wheat, and preserves
the pickles from the peppers ana
the "cowcumbers' and the melons
all the comforts of home in fact-and
the products of a cannery combined. (!
Presiding, over this exhibit, which
hadn't yet got the prize because the
judges hadn't got around, was Fletch-
er Lockhart, who raised it all on a
sixty acrea farm in st. Matthews
in Wake county.
Fletcher was asked for an autobiog-
raphy and he gave it to general sat
isfaction He had, he stated, four
children, one of whom had died, one
of whom was North" one of whom
was a school teacher and another
nineteen years old. boy who had
never been off the farm. According
to Fletcher, his exhibit contained two
hundred separate specimens raised on
his own farm and he had a stalk of
cotton eight feet high which. he de-
clared had contained two hundred
bolls. We tore ourselves away from
the farm with a sigh.
Compared with the State FAR the
midway was restful place Ihert
were some tents with the usual pic