A VILLAGE COMPETITION.

The great day in the village year has come. Coronations and jubilees sweep comet-like across the firmament, uncharted and disconcerting. They bear no charm of familiar and confident activity. They are inconsiderable beside this day of days.

The annual herald, the printed syllabus and entry-form, was distributed weeks ago over all the area touched. It is an attractive document, with its comprehensive classes and the ingeniously careful discrimination of its divisions, sounding its keynote in a preliminary definition of a cottager as "a bona-fide labouring man". Through page after page the challenge marches forward, rounding off at last with a list of the open competitions and of the several "events" in the athletic sports. In the whole straggling village there is hardly a soul that has not read it, scarcely a family standing uninvolved, excepting perhaps the nuclear members of the congregation of the tiny gospel hall in the brewery fields, living in active deprecation of revels and junketings.

For many days past women and girls have borne anxious or complacent witness to their sense of the momentous occasion. Much more fearful to them is this day of judgment than to any father or brother exhibiting merely the results of his garden-

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craft. Thought and care he has bestowed since the earliest
budding days of the year, perhaps since last summer. He has
watched day by day, selecting and rejecting, has at last chosen
and committed himself, and there, for him, the matter ends.
His trial under high focus will last but a moment, when the
judges make their unwitnessed round. Long before evening his
suspense will cease; satisfaction or disappointment will be
his ascertained lot.

To some few of the women, however, the personal strain is
mitigated by the relief of a practical stake. Prizes are to be
had in the open list for the best loaf of home-baked bread, the
best bunch of wild flowers, and the best table decoration; and
the fact of holding office as an exhibitor, even as an unsuccessful exhibitor, sets one off to some extent for the whole day -
while the winner of a prize stands propped on that dignity
and makes a double challenge.

The dew still lies thick upon the squire's largest field
when the conflict opens, and the family breakfasting within
sight on the terrace may see their village, may be heartened and
perplexed by the sight of their village at its best. They may
watch effort, sustained and inspired, coming in its workaday
clothes to stream along the headland of the ripe bracken meadow
and through the wide gap into the great open space where the
marquees stand ready. Proudly and affectionately the "stuff"

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is brought in carts and hand-trolleys, in cases and boxes, on
tea-trays and dinner-plates, and in unsupplemented human hands.
The splendours of hot-houses and lavishly nourished gardens,
to arrive later on in smart gigs and dogcarts, will seem by
contrast but cold achievements.

The little procession streams on and concentrates irregu-
larly near the entrance of the largest tent, where the more
zealous members of the committee are at work mapping out their
space and allotting the fateful backgrounds. Many of the con-
tributors execute on the grass outside the tent a preliminary
grouping of their lots, braving the alternating stimulus and
tension of conflicting suggestions. The more independent carry
their things sternly through the gangway in the rough, setting
them up in thoughtful solitude under the creamy shade of the
canvas and leaving their adherents outside to the torment of
tantalised impulse or the happiness of blind confidence.

To enter the tent towards the end of the hour set apart
for exhibitors is instantly to be instructed in the private con-
science of the crowding necessities of the situation, the controls
and adjustments, the compelling presence of public opinion. The
air is full of escapes and burgeonings, of illuminating recog-
nitions of identity, of all the happy consequences of spontaneous
human intercourse. For some there is obviously the great surprise,
the first tasting of the essence of social satisfaction, the

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gladly tolerated going and coming amongst one's fellows, the
delicious sense of common will towards a common end. On all
hands there is rich circulation, the refreshment of contacts that
are out of the ordinary, and are yet so much a part of the justi-
fied picture as to be welcomed and acclaimed. Many an unneces-
sary journey is made, many a halt and random comment in a sheer
revel of human graciousness. There are during the morning
moments when the personal stake fades and becomes a very little
thing. The symbol of this stands out in the one garden-can which
must serve the final dippings and freshenings, for the filling
of the ranged jars destined to hold the competing bouquets and
of the vases for the table decorations. These last are an inno-
vation of this year's show and occupy a large share of the long
centre table in the principal marquee between "pot plants" and
plates of fruit from cottagers' gardens. And so it happens that
upon the unprotesting ears of the old thatcher setting out his
dozen of rosy Stibbards fall scraps of an anxious discussion be-
tween his neighbour the squire's daughter and her assistant as to
a "broader scheme", "an accentuated note". The postmaster away
beyond the last of these decorations is begged to manoeuvre his
scarlet begonias from the neighbourhood of pink sweet-peas shin-
ing faintly through a mist of gypsophila. At the head of the
tent the squire's son is polishing and arranging prizes on a
small platform, while the principal publican stands near him

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announcing in the intervals of their chat that none but exhibi-
tors may be allowed in the tent.

This fresh morning of activity amidst a general busyness
remains for most of the partakers the meaning of the day, leaves
a freshness of spirit, a renewed capacity and hopefulness which
nothing the afternoon has of offer is capable of sustaining.
Indeed, so drifting are the later centres of interest that the
accumulated stimulus of the morning tends to become an exaspera-
tion. None but the most resourceful of idlers could find means
adequately to transmute it. The show, with its floating accom-
paniment of "visitors", is an immediate solvent of the familiar,
and the combination does not in itself present to the overshadowed
villagers any aspect from which more than a chance and momentary
entertainment may be gleaned. The sports, it is true, provide
a spectacle, intelligible and exciting, but they are in compari-
son and in the end but poor fun. The refreshment-marquee, too,
is there, but the time spent under its shade almost certainly
makes it necessary to provide entertainment in one's own person,
to exhibit some measure of a quality which reaches in Sussex
surely its extremest degree of attenuation. The morning was
short, compact, and joyous. The afternoon is long, and brings
at last a relaxed weariness.

Relief comes finally with the ending of the prescribed
ritual, with the prize-giving and the squire's speech. The day